Burning Up, Burning Out - Boom Crash 9 (Final Volume)
by Laura of Maychoria
Summary: This is it. Team Voltron has been gathering their strength, and now they have started their campaign against the Galra Empire. The odds are desperate, and along the way they will have to deal with pain, injury, sickness, and past trauma that has been ignored for too long. It's going to be a hard journey, but they are all determined to succeed.
1. Chapter 1

This entire planet had Lance on edge. It wasn't like that jungle planet that had almost killed him and Shiro not that long ago, not really, but it inspired the same feelings of paranoia in him, of enemies pressing in all sides, the oppressive atmosphere and the hostility in the very air. Of course, the fact that he and Keith were currently sneaking through a cramped prison hallway with the threat of ambush lurking around every corner didn't help with that feeling, but it wasn't the only reason.

This was a swampy planet, for one thing. Not hot and fetid like that jungle, but waterlogged, the ground made of mud, the air clouded with cold, relentless fog. There had been the predictable jokes about Dagobah when they first landed here, of course, but what the place really reminded Lance of was that endless muddy swamp in The Neverending Story where Atreyu lost his precious Artax to the inevitable pull of despair.

The air smelled of dirt. It smelled of mud. It smelled of worms and crustaceans and slippery creatures sliding around just underneath the dirty, opaque surface of the swamp. The water was thick, too, more mud than liquid, viscous and sticky, threatening to pull everything under like bad-smelling quicksand.

It was a nasty place. Lance had put his visor down after only a few minutes of enduring the cool, unpleasant air, but he still felt like he could smell the mud and the dirt and the slime. Even being inside the cold, industrial walls of the Galra prison complex couldn't protect him from that smell.

Keith slid along the wall, sword out and posture balanced forward, braced to leap and spin, while Lance held back a few steps, gun loosely held in both hands ready to swing up the instant a target presented itself. It worked for them, Keith with his short-range expertise and Lance at long range, which is why they'd been teamed up for this mission. This wasn't the first time Team Voltron had had to clean out a facility while facing guerilla-style resistance. It was starting to get almost routine, though that never kept Lance's heart from pounding, his finger from trembling on the trigger. It felt new every single time.

How many prisons had they freed now? Six? Seven? Something like that. The first few planets where they arrived, guns blazing, had tried to fight Voltron off with all the power at their disposal. That invariably led to the annihilation of their entire fleet, though, so eventually the Galra had adopted a new strategy. Now, when Voltron showed up in the system, they scrambled a few fighters and cruisers to keep them at bay while the majority of the Galra forces beat a retreat.

They always left some volunteers behind on the planet, though. The most fierce soldiers, the most loyal, the most violent. These were not robot sentries. They were sentient creatures, flesh-and-blood Galra who served Zarkon with every fiber of their beings. They knew they faced death, choosing to attempt to ambush the most powerful military force currently opposing the Galra Empire, and they did it anyway. They threw their lives away, willingly and completely, on the slightest chance that they might be able to take down a Paladin of Voltron with them. It made Lance think of kamikaze soldiers from Earth's history. Suicide bombers. Those monks who would light themselves on fire in political protest. He wasn't the only one to make those comparisons, but it was unnerving to think about, so mostly Team Voltron just set their collective jaw and did the work they had to do.

And it had to be done. They had all agreed on this course of action. For one thing, this was the only path to finding Matt and Sam Holt, which might have seemed like a small goal in the grand scheme of defeating a universe-wide evil, but it was the one that was highest on the minds of all of the paladins. They had all had their moments of pain and despair, all learned to build themselves and each other up and carry on, but there were moments that broke them, one and all, even so.

After Pidge and Lance risked their lives pulling all of the publicly available information on the Galra prison system from a central communication hub, Pidge had spent days locked in her lab decrypting and analyzing it all. She was certain that she was just _this_ close to finding her family, and the rest of them were all borne along in her optimistic certainty. This was it, the whole enchilada. Prisoners' designations, origins, transfers, current statuses, everything. If Matt and Sam Holt could not be found in this enormous trove of data, the chances of finding them at all dropped to near zero.

Lance remembered pacing outside the door of Pidge's lab, unwilling to go in and interrupt her work but unable to stay away. He kept trying to do other things, like clean Blue or train with Keith or cook with Hunk, but as soon as his mind began to wander, his feet did too, and he found himself back outside that blank, silent door. The others were in a similar state, though Shiro undoubtedly had the worst of it. He looked more and more ragged as the days passed without news, and the bags under his eyes deepened, his sleep interrupted by more and more nightmares no matter how everyone, including Lance, tried to soothe him.

They expected Pidge to emerge at any moment, worn but triumphant, holding aloft a data crystal with her family's location inside. Then they would leap to the command deck, and Allura would open a wormhole, and they would get into the lions and form Voltron and tear apart whatever world they landed in until they found the Holts. It wasn't a great plan, maybe, but Lance liked the pictures it painted in his head. If he couldn't see his own family, not for now, he could at least help Pidge see hers. It was all he wanted, all anyone wanted.

But when Pidge finally emerged from her lab, she was not triumphant.

Lance happened to be there, pacing again, when the door finally opened and Pidge swayed into the hall, then stood there with her hands at her sides, staring straight ahead. Lance leaped to meet her, and his heart sank instantly as soon as he caught a glimpse of her face. There was no beaming joy shining through her exhaustion, no sparkle in her eyes, red and bloodshot from lack of sleep. Instead she looked almost...blank.

"Pidge." A lump rose in Lance's throat, and his voice came out breathy and choked. He reached out and grabbed her shoulders, and she barely reacted, barely blinked. "Pidge... What did you find?"

"Nothing." Pidge's head slowly, slowly tilted to look at him, letting him see the emptiness in her eyes. Her gaze was glassy and distant, numb. "I looked, Lance. I looked so hard. And then I looked again. And...nothing."

"You didn't find anything at all?" Lance whispered. "Not even from when they were captured? They had to have been put in the main database then, didn't they? Shiro... Shiro still was. That's how they caught him and Allura back then."

Pidge nodded slowly. "Back at the beginning... Yeah. I thought I could use Shiro's prisoner number to find them, because their numbers had to be in sequence, right? But no, the numbers had to be randomly assigned, not sequential, so all of my searches of numbers near Shiro's were useless. Then I dug into Shiro's files..." She shuddered and closed her eyes for a moment, then stared at Lance again. "They were encrypted, probably because of Haggar... But I broke it. I broke the cyphers, Lance."

"Of course you did," he said. "You always do." He squeezed her shoulders. "So you found your dad and brother's prisoner numbers in Shiro's first files, right? That has to be where you went."

"Yeah, I did. There was a report about what happened when Matt and Shiro were sent to the arena, and then..."

Lance bit his lip to keep from interrupting her. Pidge stared away, blinking, but she seemed to be working up to something.

"Nothing," she whispered. "After the first few reports, Dad and Matt vanish from the system. There's no record of a transfer, no hint of where they went. They were both sent to a labor colony soon after Shiro won his first fight in the arena. And then it just...stops. There's nothing else. No matter how I tried, no matter how I searched, I couldn't find them."

"Pidge..." Tears pushed against Lance's eyes, but he couldn't let them out, not yet. He jerked forward, almost faster then his mind could process, and pulled her into his arms. He held her tight, maybe too tight, but all he was thinking about was his own dad, his own papá, his brothers both older and younger, and how much this would hurt. How awful this would be, how _crippling._

Pidge didn't move at first, limp in his grip, but then she lifted her hands and pressed her palms against Lance's back. He bent his face over her messy head and pressed his nose against the crown of her head, ignoring the funky scent from too many days without a shower.

"But you didn't find a death record, right?" Lance asked, desperate for any shred of hope. "It just...it just stopped. The records just stopped. That's what you said, right?"

Pidge drew in a shuddery breath and nodded against his shoulder. "Yeah. They just stopped. It's...it's the worst."

Lance nodded frantically and rubbed her back with one hand, still holding tight with his other arm. "I know, I know. It's awful not knowing. But also... It means something else could have happened. We know Haggar took an interest in Shiro. Maybe she thought there was something strange about humans. Maybe she had your dad and brother set aside so she could keep an eye on them."

Pidge shivered. Her voice went higher. "That's worse!"

"I know." He squeezed her. "I know. I'm sorry I had to bring it up. But... Maybe Haggar keeps separate records, so they weren't in the databanks we pulled. You thought that might be a possibility, right? When we went on that mission, you said they had to be there, but if not they would have to be in some off-the-grid facility. You started to mention Haggar, but you stopped, because you didn't want to think about it. I get it, I do."

Pidge was still listening.

Lance took a couple of shaky breaths, then stood back. He held her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. They were full of tears, now, though they hadn't spilled yet. Lance's heart hurt, but he made himself keep going. "Maybe they're alive. Maybe we can find them. You can't...you can't give up, Pidge. Please. Don't give up. Not yet."

Pidge blinked, once. The tears slid down her cheeks, but she met Lance's gaze. "You really... You're really invested in this, aren't you?"

Lance nodded rapidly. "I want you to find your family, Pidge. I want you to be with them. I want..." He bit his lip, then went on. "And I want to help. I want to do...something good for you. Okay? I just do. There doesn't have to be a deep reason. I really, really want you to be okay, and I want your family to be okay, too."

"Lance." A tiny sob burst out of Pidge's mouth, and she surged forward and hid her face against his chest again, wrapping her arms tight around his middle.

He held her tight. As tight as he could. "I love you, Pidge," he murmured.

"Love you too," she mumbled into his chest.

"We're gonna figure this out. We're gonna find a way. I promise."

She chuckled, disbelieving, but squeezed him tighter. He held onto her until they both steadied, and then they went to the command deck to tell everyone else the news.

Everyone was devastated. They had all had such high hopes, even Allura and Coran, who Lance might have expected to be the least connected to this effort. But the paladins had become their family, too, over their time together, all the trials and tribulations and sharing and bonding. Pidge's pain was theirs. All of theirs.

The war was exhausting, draining. Team Voltron was slowly gathering allies, liberating planets where they could, answering distress signals. But they were no closer to their ultimate goal of defeating Zarkon. They could destroy individual fleets and chase away sector commanders, but the Empire was too vast and dispersed for a single force to defeat alone, no matter how powerful. Every small victory only drove that fact home.

So they had all become invested in Pidge's quest. They wanted a victory, a win they could chalk up definitively in the success column. They needed it. Finding that communication hub had seemed like the wildest stroke of luck, and they were all eager to take advantage of the intel. Now that had been taken away.

"We're not giving up," Allura said, teeth gritted, after everyone had a moment to absorb the shock of Pidge's announcement. Her fists were clenched, arms half extended into a boxer's stance, and her legs were spread as if to keep her balance on a tilting ship. "This is not the end."

Everyone looked at her, Pidge with weary blankness, Lance with a spark of hope. Allura nodded to Pidge. "You have all this information, yes? So you know which prisoners were with your father and brother before they disappeared. If they were transferred to Haggar's personal facilities, or somewhere else, there would have been rumors around the prison. You have records for everyone else. We can go to wherever those fellow prisoners are currently being held and rescue them, then ask for any news of your family."

Lance's mouth dropped open. "Princess, that's..."

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him. "Farfetched? Desperate? Likely to take a very, very long time?"

Lance shook his head. "Brilliant. I was going to say brilliant. I mean, yes, it's all of those other things, too. But... I think it has a chance."

Shiro nodded firmly. "I agree. It's our best chance."

Allura looked at Coran, who was currently pulling at his mustache in thought. As the military advisor and the one of their number with the most experience and knowledge, he would be best positioned to point out flaws with the plan. "This will also further our goals in other ways," Allura said. "We have spoken about using classic resistance tactics against the Empire, such as striking at outposts, performing raids on random targets of value then fading back. With our current alliance, we can't risk liberating too many planets because we won't be able to guarantee their protection after the initial battle. But raids on Galra targets we don't intend to control after we strike will take the pressure off of us and put it on them instead."

"The best defense is a good offense," Hunk said, getting into it.

Coran nodded gravely. "It's not a bad plan. Not at all. From what we've learned, much of the Galra Empire's economy is based on the slave labor of the prison system and stripping planets of their resources. Disrupting supply chains is a classic military strategy, too. If we can make raids on enough prisons, rescuing the prisoners and destroying the facilities, we will weaken the Empire as a whole."

Allura looked at Pidge. "The raids will need to seem random. That will force them to disperse their fleets, never knowing where we will strike next. Please compile a list of prisoners who had contact with your family and their current locations, then devise a way of randomly selecting our targets."

Pidge swallowed, eyes shining. "Do you really think this will work?" Her voice was breathy, almost inaudible. Keith, on the opposite of her from Lance, reached out and gripped her shoulder.

Allura looked at her, calm and resolute, the very image of a strong, determined leader. "Yes, I do." It was the tone of someone who did not think that a plan would work because it had to, but because she would _make_ it so.

They all would. Lance closed his eyes and drew a breath, feeling the certainty in his bones. They were going to do it. They were going to find Matt and Sam Holt no matter what it took.

Now, Lance and Keith rounded another corner of the hallway in the prison complex, one step closer to the goal.

"How's it looking?" Lance murmured, keeping his voice low even though no one but Keith would be able to hear him through the helmet comm.

"Clear so far," Keith said, tension in his voice even while his movements were smooth and graceful. "BLIP tech still showing no other bio signatures in this section."

The Galra had jammed their scans before, though. That had been a bad raid. Shiro had almost died. Lance shivered and refused to think about it. His rifle swung up a couple of inches, even so.

One more raid. One more liberation. They were going to stay sharp, they were going to stay ready, and they were going to get through this. It was the only option Lance would allow. For Pidge, and for himself.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** If you are bothered by blood and violence, you might want to skip this chapter. I will summarize it in the end note so you can see what happens there. It's bad enough that I considered changing the rating of the story from T to M.

* * *

Keith and Lance were still moving through the prison, taking it slow and steady, when something caught Lance's attention and he went still, a hand out for Keith to halt. Keith stopped, looking into his face, while Lance tilted his head, listening. That sounded like...voices. Several of them. Some high-pitched and frightened, some deep and bellowing. He couldn't make out the words at first, but the higher voices...it sounded like they were screaming...

Then he caught a phrase in the bellowing voice. His breath caught as realization hit him. Before Keith could ask what he'd heard, Lance set his feet under himself and bolted down the hall.

He didn't have time. Didn't have time to explain, didn't have time to wait, didn't have time to work up a plan. Fortunately, Keith didn't question him, just raced down the hall behind him. Lance rounded a corner, arms and legs pumping, hands tight around his gun. Now the voices were clearer, and Keith could hear it, too.

"Paladins! Come and find me! Or we'll kill them all!"

One of the high-pitched voices squealed in terror and pain. A prisoner. A captive. A slave being used as bait for a trap that Lance was running into full-tilt, and he couldn't stop. _"Please, please!"_ the voice screamed.

Then it cut off in a wet, bubbling gurgle.

Another victim. Another death Lance had been just this far away from preventing. He clenched his teeth and ran, hearing the rage in Keith's strangled growl behind him.

Another corner, and they came out on a balcony overlooking an open area below. The room looked like a holding area, perhaps where prisoners were mustered at the beginning of the day before being herded off to work. It was made of drab concrete and ringed with cells, some of them now open. In the middle of the area stood three Galra, each holding a prisoner in front of them with knives to their throats. Most of the prisoners here were natives of this planet, an amphibian-like race with gray, damp skin and no hair. At the Galra's feet was another prisoner, rapidly bleeding out on the dirty floor. The dying prisoner's harsh wet gasps echoed around the chamber and burrowed into Lance's ears like terrible little insects, clawing their way in deep, too deep to ever be found.

Lance's gun was already on his shoulder, aimed at the enemies below. Keith slammed his hands down on the metal railing of the balcony and half-growled, half-yelled, enraged at being trapped up here where he couldn't use his weapon. Lance said nothing. He focused his aim on the Galra in the middle, who was slightly taller and broader than the others, with a more wicked grin. This had probably been his plan.

At the sight of them, that Galra's grin widened, and he stared up at Lance with bright, beaming glee. "Paladins!" he bellowed, and yes, that was the voice Lance had heard echoing down the halls. He sounded immensely pleased. "You heard my invitation!"

"We heard you!" Keith yelled down at him. "We heard everything, you quiznak! Now let them go, or Lance will shoot you all where you stand!"

"Oh, will he?" The central Galra only glanced at Keith for a second before looking back at Lance, literally staring down the barrel of his gun. "The Blue Paladin is a competent sniper, by all accounts. I have no doubt that he could shoot me. But he can't shoot all of us. Not in time to prevent us from killing at least three of our prisoners."

As if in proof, he pressed his knife closer to the throat of the person he was holding, drawing a thin line of dark gray blood from light gray skin. The other two Galra did the same, causing their prisoners to gasp and choke. Lance's finger tightened on the trigger, but he didn't press down. He desperately wanted to kill that monster where he stood, but he couldn't.

He knew the truth. He wasn't Tony Stark with a dozen tiny guided missiles on his shoulders. He couldn't shoot three different people in the same instant. He would have to prioritize. He would have to aim, and shoot, and aim and shoot again. Even assuming that he could do it as quickly as he'd ever done it, without missing once, it would still take at least two seconds for him to shoot all three of the enemies. He could prevent one throat from being slit, but not all of them.

Keith didn't think about the math. He was already moving while Lance was still absorbing in his head just how bad this situation was. He jumped on the balcony's railing, jetpack lighting on his back as he prepared to fly down there and take them all on.

But the central Galra, who Lance had decided to call Monster, was faster. Before Keith's feet had even set down on the railing, he dragged his knife across the throat of the prisoner he was holding. "Stop!" he bellowed.

Keith stopped.

The two paladins stood there, frozen in horror, as Monster dragged the bleeding prisoner across the floor and dumped him outside the open door of a cell. Then he reached into the cell and grabbed another prisoner. This one was a woman, shivering and sobbing, the fern-like ears on the back of her head quivering like leaves in the wind. Monster pulled her back to the middle of the room.

He grinned up at Keith. "You see what will happen if you attack us? Now, how about you rethink this."

One of the other Galra at the end of the line stepped forward, dragging his prisoner along, and tossed something heavy up onto the balcony. It clanked down on the concrete floor, and Lance's eyes flicked to take it in, then returned to sighting down his gun. It was two pairs of cuffs.

"Put those on," Monster called. "Both of you. Then come down quietly and surrender to us. If you don't, we will kill the prisoners. All of them."

As if on that signal, several other Galra stepped out of the cells ringing the common area, all holding knives to prisoners' throats. There was no way to tell if there were any more Galra hiding out of sight. There could be ten or twenty of them, all ready to kill a prisoner, or two, or ten, before Keith and Lance were able to take them down.

Lance swallowed as he absorbed just how thoroughly screwed he and Keith were. This was far worse than any other ambush they'd ever run into. This was the impossible scenario. There was no way to win.

There were just two ways to lose. Either he and Keith could surrender, which would cripple Voltron and leave the rest of the universe vulnerable to Galra tyranny, with no hope of freedom. Unacceptable. Or he and Keith could fight, which would result in the deaths of dozens of prisoners, at the least. Also unacceptable.

Lance closed his eyes in a long blink, his head reeling with dizziness. Keith stepped back, movements slow and sluggish, as if he was wading through the mud that coated this planet. His bayard lowered to his side, still in the form of a sword. He looked down at the cuffs, then at Lance. His eyes were anguished, and Lance felt the same pain mirrored in his own.

They had gone over impossible scenarios in training, of course. They had to. Most of the scenarios were abstract and distant, thought experiments. You can flip the switch on a trolley track and the runaway trolley will run over either five people or one person. You're in a burning building with your mother in one room and a hundred strangers in another and you can only open one door before the roof collapses. Which choice to take? Neither was acceptable. Both would leave the decision-maker with blood on their hands. But one choice was slightly less unacceptable than the other.

Lance met Keith's eyes, saw them harden as his own jaw was clenching. There was no time to speak. No time to ask permission. No time to consult Shiro or Coran or anyone else. No time to beg forgiveness.

They turned back to the Monster standing down there on the floor, completely convinced of his victory. They said nothing. They allowed no buildup, no indication of their choice. They rushed into action and they accepted the consequences.

Keith flew over the balcony with his jetpack, bayard sword extended. Lance began to shoot. Keith headed toward the edge of the room, trusting Lance to pick off the visible enemies while he cleaned out the cells. Lance shot Monster through the head. One shot, easy and clean. Then he aimed at the next one, then the next.

They were too slow. Of course. In the fraction of a second it took for Keith and Lance to move, Galra knives were already moving. But Lance saved the female prisoner Monster had been holding, at least. Other prisoners fell beside their captors, throats slit in the instant before Lance shot the Galra holding them in the face.

It was a bloodbath. In seconds, Lance had killed all the Galra he could see, then had to fly over the balcony and land on the floor, his feet slipping in a streak of blood. Keith continued to move through the cells, slicing and hacking. Lance aimed opposite where he was, to the cells where Galra were still cutting throats, one by one, relentless and methodical. None of them shot back at Lance and Keith. They just killed prisoners.

Team Voltron could not allow this tactic to succeed. If the Galra learned that they could coerce the paladins' cooperation with sentient shields, that would be the end of their resistance. Keith and Lance had to show that they would make the hard decisions. The Galra had to know that they would accept civilian death in exchange for victory. Lance's mouth flooded with bitter salt. He continued to shoot.

He knew he was going to remember every face he shot. His dad had been right when he told Lance this, so long ago on the shooting range. _You think you'll forget, but you won't. You remember every single one. So you have to be sure each time you pull the trigger. You have to accept the burden you are taking on. You have to know what it means, and you have to be willing to bear it._

Lance was willing. He shot. And shot. And shot.

At last, it ended. It probably hadn't been more than twenty or thirty seconds, but it felt like hours. Lance's hands fell to his sides. his chest heaving for breath, face covered with sweat.

He didn't have time to stop. He dismissed the bayard into his armor, then pelted forward to where the first prisoner whose throat had been cut lay on the floor, bleeding out. The prisoner was still gasping for breath, smooth amphibian skin light from blood loss. He looked almost washed out now, almost drained.

The female prisoner Monster had grabbed from the cell was leaning over him, one hand laid gently over the cut on his throat. Lance fell to his knees across from her, visor opening as he bent over the dying prisoner. "We have to put pressure on the wound," he said urgently, reaching out. "We have to stop the bleeding. If there's any chance..."

She shook her head gently and looked up at him, big black eyes huge and round and liquid. Lance's heart sank into his stomach. She was telling him it was too late, this person was already dead...

But she smiled. "All will be well, paladin." She withdrew her hand from the gaping cut, and Lance stared at it, mouth falling open. It had already stopped bleeding, a thick, yellow-green clot pasted over the wound.

"Our bodies have adapted to quickly create waterproof clots over our wounds to protect us from the pathogens in our environment. When we suffer a catastrophic injury, our hearts slow, preventing too much blood loss. These cuts are deep and will need a long time to heal, but they are unlikely to be fatal."

Lance looked around, eyes wide. Everywhere he looked, prisoners were fallen on the floor, blood spattered around them. But their chests were still moving. Those who had not been cut were bending over their fellows, checking on them, sometimes with a webbed, three-fingered hand gently laid over the wound as if to aid the healing process.

Lance looked back to the female prisoner across from him. "What's your name?"

"Caulra, of the Anabaxi. Our planet is Anabax. Thank you for saving us, paladin."

Lance shook his head. "I didn't save you, though. So many of you got hurt."

Caulra touched the side of her bald, shiny head, where Lance's blaster bolt had passed by so recently and struck Monster in the face. Perhaps she had the felt the warmth of the energy blast. "I am uninjured. You saved me. You saved all of us."

Lance looked around again, swallowing. In a cell on the other side of the room, Keith was bent over a fallen Anabaxi as well. "What can I do?" he asked.

Caulra rose to her feet, moving with a sort of slippery grace. "Help me check the wounded. If any of them need help closing their wounds, we will assist."

Lance stood shakily and followed. He ignored the fallen Galra, stopping beside each wounded Anabaxi to make sure the slit in their throat was closing over. Sometimes he had to hold a gash together, dark gray blood oozing sluggishly between his fingers, until the clot began to form. As soon as the yellow-green patch was thick and the blood stopped, he moved onto the next one.

He fell into a sort of trance, seeing nothing but blood, dark wounds across pale skin, yellow-green clots and heaving chests. In the corner of his vision were dark mounds of purple fur and dark uniforms, the occasional flash of red and white armor as Keith moved nearby, but he refused to acknowledge them. He moved from prisoner to prisoner, intent on helping as much as he could.

Shiro called in for a report, and Keith answered. The prison was cleared out now, Lance heard that much. The rest of the team had had no trouble. All of the Galra had gathered here, concentrating on this singular ambush strategy. Now the rest of Team Voltron was also converging on their position, bringing help.

At the end of the day, eighteen Galra were dead, forty-three Anabaxi were badly wounded and needed the healing pods, and one Anabaxi had died. He had been a child, too young for his body to absorb the deep wound he had taken. Lance's eyes were dry for now, but he knew he would cry about it later.

But they won. Or at least, they had chosen the least bad way to lose. At the end of the day, that had to count for something.

* * *

 **Summary:** Keith and Lance are put into an impossible situation by Galra soldiers: surrender, or the Galra will slit the throats of the prisoners they are holding captive. Even if they fight, they will not be able to save all of the prisoners. They choose to fight, knowing that they can't allow this tactic to succeed, or Voltron's resistance against the Empire will be effectively over. Afterward, it is revealed that the race of this planet, the Anabaxi, are able to quickly close even major wounds, so most of them do not die, but will need the healing pods. One child did die, though, and Lance and Keith know that they will have to live with this decision and the blood on their hands.


	3. Chapter 3

The room where Keith and Lance had fought the Galra and rescued the prisoners was a horror show. There was blood smeared on the floor, the bars of the cells, even some of the walls. Dead Galra had been dragged over to the side of the room in an unceremonious heap, and injured Anabaxi lay in rows on the other side, being tended by their fellows. Lance knelt among the injured, but Shiro found Keith standing by the door.

He saw Keith's exhaustion at a glance, the rigidity of his posture, the way his arms were crossed over his chest. Tired wrinkles ringed his eyes, and his mouth was downturned in a tight frown. He was staring in Lance's direction, though Shiro wasn't sure if he was actually seeing him or if his had attention drifted off.

"Keith." Shiro kept his voice soft, but Keith still jumped, then whirled to face him. His hands moved in front of his torso in a defensive stance, but when he saw who it was, he relaxed.

"Shiro." Keith looked at the door, saw Pidge and Hunk bringing in the hover stretchers they had found in the prison infirmary. Coran and Allura would be coming soon with more. They would transfer all of the wounded Anabaxi to the castle and start running the healing pods immediately. This was going to take all of their capacity and then some.

Shiro wasn't worried about that at the moment. Keith had told him in his report about the Anabaxi's healing capabilities. No one else was likely to die in the varga or two it took to transport them all. At the moment, Shiro was much more worried about the two young men, his teammates and brothers, who had been forced into an impossible situation with no choice but to allow innocents to be harmed. Killed, as far as they knew.

He put a hand on Keith's shoulder and tugged him closer to his side. He kept his voice low, not because he didn't want anyone to hear, but to signal to Keith that this conversation was only for the two of them. Shiro didn't care about anything else at the moment.

"Are you okay?"

Keith's eyes flinched, and he looked across the room at Lance again. "I'll be okay," he said woodenly. "You should be more worried about Lance. He took it...really hard. He's barely looked up from the wounded since the fight finished."

Shiro squeezed his shoulder, not looking away from Keith's face. "I'm worried about him, too," he said. "But right now, I'm asking you. You were face to face with those monsters. You saw them murdering civilians, or attempting to, even more closely than Lance did. How are you doing?"

Keith sighed and closed his eyes, relaxing marginally. He breathed deep for a few moments, leaning into Shiro's hand. Then he opened his eyes and looked into his face. "It was...bad. It was horrible. I'm never gonna forget it. I know that. I know...logically...we couldn't make any other choice. But I wish we could have. I wish we could have surrendered and let the Galra take their cruelty out on us and leave those poor people alone. I'm never gonna stop wishing that. It... The universe doesn't give us what we wish, some of the time. Most of the time. And that's... I don't know. It's hard to take. But I'm dealing, honest. I know we did what we had to do. It's gonna take some time for me to be okay with that, but..." He gave a weary shrug. "That's war. War is hell."

"Yeah."

Shiro swallowed the lump in his throat, then pulled Keith in for a quick hug. Keith went, letting himself be held, before thumping Shiro on the back and pulling back again. Keith put his hand on Shiro's upper arm and shoved him toward the other side of the room. "Go check on Lance. I know you want to."

Shiro gave him a tremulous smile. Keith knew him so well. He nodded, then went.

There were...so many. So many wounded. All Anabaxi, though Shiro and the others had found other races in different parts of the prison. It was lucky, since other species wouldn't have had the adaptations to survive these wounds. But as Shiro's eyes passed over them, young and old, male and female, all laid out on the floor like a horrific kind of census, all he could think was just how thoroughly, how terribly, the Galra had exploited this planet and its people.

Lance didn't look up as Shiro moved to where he was kneeling and crouched down beside him. Lance was holding the hand of a wounded Anabaxi, looking earnestly into her face. When Shiro got close enough, he could hear what Lance was saying.

"Everything is going to be okay. Voltron is here now, and we're going to get back to the castle and get you all healed up. There's this cool thing called a healing pod. Well, Coran calls it a cryo-replenisher, but he's the only one. The rest of us just call 'em healing pods because they're pods and they heal you. So yeah, I'm not sure how many we have, but I'm sure there are enough. Coran will figure it out. He's really smart. I've been in a healing pod myself a few times. It doesn't hurt at all. You go in and you fall asleep, and then you get out and you're fine. All the pain is gone and your body is healed. You might be kind of hungry and weak for a while, but you'll be fine. Everything is gonna be okay."

"Lance." Shiro reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

Lance went still, staring down at the Anabaxi's face. The Anabaxi's lips moved, but she couldn't speak, possibly because her throat had been damaged. After a moment, she gently pulled her hand out of Lance's and patted his fingers, then nodded toward Shiro, a clear instruction for Lance to pay attention to his leader. She smiled, too, soft and reassuring, telling Lance without words that he had done his job.

Lance turned his head to look at Shiro. He looked terrible: haggard, exhausted, pale, as if the last couple of hours had drained all of his energy away. He'd gone into the mission as perky and healthy as ever, and now he looked like he'd been working himself to the bone for three days straight.

Shiro tugged gently on his shoulder, urging him up. "Let's talk."

Lance let Shiro guide him to his feet and lead him away from the wounded Anabaxi, though he kept looking back, reluctant to be parted from them. Shiro took him over to the wall and manuevered them so Lance couldn't see the wounded without turning his head at an uncomfortable angle. Lance finally focused on him, and Shiro almost winced at the pain in his eyes. It was getting far too familiar.

"Are you okay?" Shiro asked. "Maybe you should go back to the castle. The rest of us can handle transporting the prisoners."

Lance shook his head. "I want to help."

"You have. You've helped enormously." Shiro held his shoulders in both hands. "Keith gave me a full report. You were very brave and strong, Lance. You made the right decision, both of you."

Lance's eyes flickered. His breath caught, and his turned his head to cough into his elbow, then looked back to Shiro. "Did Keith tell you that one of them died? A child?"

Shiro nodded. "Yes. I'm very sorry about that. But it wasn't your fault."

Lance refused to meet his eyes.

Shiro drew a breath and went on. "Keith also told me that the two of you killed eighteen Galra. He cut down five of them with his sword, and you shot the rest of them yourself."

Lance's lip twisted. "The perks of having a long-range weapon."

His voice was bitter. Shiro grimaced. "Are you okay about that, too?"

"I have to be." But Lance looked away, eyes on the floor.

"It's okay to not be okay," Shiro said softly.

Lance's face softened, and his shoulders relaxed under Shiro's hands. The beginning of a genuine smile lifted his lips, though it wasn't quite there. He wasn't ready to smile, not yet. "I know." He sounded sincere. Shiro had to believe it was the truth. "I'm not okay, Shiro. But I will be. I just... I'm gonna need time to get used to it. Again. It's new every time."

Shiro nodded. His throat felt thick with his own bitterness, bitterness at this war, at the cruelty of the Galra in forcing Keith and Lance into this situation, at the lions for choosing these children to fight a war in the first place. Lance and Keith and Pidge and Hunk were all too young for this, and they'd always been too young. They'd all killed flesh-and-blood Galra by now, every single one of them. Not only formed as Voltron, but up close and personal. Facing guerilla resistance in these prison-clearing missions guaranteed that.

But this particular mission had been the worst by far.

Thirteen. Lance had killed thirteen Galra today, and the nature of being a sniper meant that he had seen each of them as if they were face to face just as he pulled the trigger to end their lives. Keith's fighting style meant that he killed close up, too, but he had the mitigating factor of knowing that his enemies had a fair chance to fight back. Lance didn't have that. The whole team was fighting in self-defense and in the defense of innocent lives, but that fact felt more abstract for Lance than it did for the rest of them. They had discussed this in the past, but understanding it didn't make it go away.

"This was a rough mission," Shiro said gently. "Especially for you. You're allowed to rest."

Lance shook his head, eyes going distant, and craned his head to look back at the wounded. "I want to help transport them to the healing pods. Please, Shiro. Don't force me away."

Shiro had been considering just that. Making it an order. Now he paused, caught out. He swallowed, closed his eyes for a moment, then looked Lance in the face. "Okay. But you can change your mind at any time. If it gets to be too much for you, leave. Go back to the castle, take a nap, hang out with Blue, whatever you need to do. Are we clear?"

Lance nodded solemnly. "We're clear."

They shared a quick hug, too, little more than a squeeze around the shoulders. Still, Shiro felt better for it, and he was pretty sure Lance did, too. Then they got to work.

Hours later, all of the wounded Anabaxi had been moved. The healing pods were all full, thirty of them in three different rooms, and Coran was working on refurbishing more in secondary and tertiary infirmaries. Shiro hadn't realized that the castle had so many infirmaries, but it was yet another mark of how heavily populated the ship must have been before the flight to Arus.

Thirteen Anabaxi were resting, their wounds not quite as deep as those of their brethren in the pods but still in need of care. Not to mention the rest of the prisoners, of course, who could all use a healing stint. They had all suffered malnutrition, overwork, dehydration, and various diseases from poor conditions. Anabax seemed to be a particularly bad planet for breeding illnesses, necessitating the natives' clotting factor. For now, the Voltron team had set everyone up in the refugee quarters they'd used many times now after a liberating a prison.

Lance finally consented to go rest only after the castle returned to a stationary orbit, having landed on the ground to onload passengers. Pidge and Allura were moving among the refugees, talking to whoever had the energy, looking for anyone who had had contact with Matt or Sam Holt. Shiro found Hunk standing near an entrance to the main refugee lounge where most of them were gathered, staring glassily at the crowd.

"Hunk." Shiro reached out for his shoulder, not surprised when he jumped at the contact.

Hunk blinked, then faced him fully, some measure of alertness back in his eyes. "You need something?"

Shiro smiled. "I'm fine. Do you know where Keith went?"

Hunk shook his head. "My first guess would be the training deck to blow off steam, like usual after a hard mission, but... I'm not sure. I don't think he likes his bayard very much right now."

Shiro grimaced. "Yeah, I got that feeling. It's nice that Altean weapons are self-cleaning, but sometimes... It feels like there's still blood on them."

Hunk nodded, the flesh around his eyes wrinkling. "You should probably talk to him. Well, maybe not talk. Talking isn't always a great way for Keith to de-stress. But at least find him and sit with him."

"Exactly what I was thinking." Shiro sighed and glanced down the hallway. "He might be on the observation deck. I'll try that next. Why don't you go check on Lance? He shouldn't be alone right now, either."

Hunk nodded. "Thanks, I'll do that."

He gave Shiro a smile, then left almost too quickly, grateful for the excuse to leave. Hunk was a remarkably kind and compassionate young man, and he was always happy to help rescued prisoners and refugees, but the sight of so much sentient pain all at once could also be very draining even for his enormous reserves of strength. Today had been rough on him, too, though he would never admit it, not while Keith and Lance were suffering so much more acutely.

Shiro blew out a breath. Hunk and Lance would take care of each other, he had no doubt of that. Two down, two to go. He would check on Pidge while he was here, then go after Keith.

Pidge and Allura were in a corner of the room talking to a lanky refugee who leaned tensely against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. This wasn't an Anabaxi. As Shiro approached, he saw that he was an Unilu. He seemed to remember a few Unilu from Pidge's list, and he bit his lip, body going tense.

When he got close enough, he could hear the conversation. "...And I'm telling you, no chance," the Unilu said, voice sharp.

"Yes, you've said that," Allura said, her voice calmly smooth, professionally diplomatic, even as Shiro could see her shoulders quivering with tension. Her hands were folded demurely in front of her abdomen and her face was pleasantly neutral, but Shiro could tell by the way she stood that she desperately wanted to fight.

Pidge looked even worse. One hand was buried in her hair, clenching so tight Shiro feared for her roots, and her eyes were shiny with tears. Shiro reached out for both of his teammates, putting one hand on Pidge's shoulder and the other on Allura's back. "What's going on here?"

Pidge whirled toward him, face twisted in a grimace of agony and rage. "He knows. He knew my dad. He knows where they were taken. But he won't tell us."

Shiro let go of her shoulder and stood up to his full height, so quickly that he was barely aware he was doing it. He looked down on the Unilu from his full height, and he knew his face was harsh, terrifying. The look that those who faced the Champion had seen before they died.

A hum of power registered dully on the edge of his senses. His arm had activated. He hadn't decided to do that.

"Why?" he asked, voice thunderous.

The Unilu shrank back, terror in his eyes, but one pair of arms stayed stubbornly crossed over his chest while the other pair pressed against the wall as if seeking escape. His words came out rushed and fearful, but firm. "I didn't say I wouldn't tell you. I said I had a condition. I want to make a bargain."

Oh. He was _that_ kind of scoundrel. Shiro snarled in disgust, but backed off by a hair. His arm deactivated, lowering to his side. "And what condition is that?"

The Unilu looked down at his arm, then back into Shiro's face. He straightened, more confident now that he knew he wasn't going to die in the immediate future. "I'll tell you what happened to Matthew and Samuel Holt. But first, I want you to save my planet."


	4. Chapter 4

Lance wasn't in his bedroom when Hunk went looking for him. Hunk briefly considered checking Blue or the lounge, but then he saw that Lance's personal care items were missing from his dresser, and he smiled smugly to himself. He knew exactly where Lance was.

Sure enough, the communal bathroom was fragrant with steam, and Lance was standing in front of the row of sinks and mirrors. He was wearing his pajamas, fabric sticking to his skin in places where it was still damp, and a towel was wrapped around his head. All of his bottles were lined up in a row, and he was touching the tops delicately, humming to himself. He was already deep into this, his favorite relaxation routine, eyes half-lidded and muscles going loose, and it made Hunk smile even wider to see it.

He glanced up lazily at the sound of Hunk's entrance and gave him a slow smile in return. "Hey, man. Wanna join in?"

"Always. I'll just hop in the shower and be right with you. You'll wait for me to start?"

Lance nodded affably and fiddled with his hair, rubbing the towel hard enough that it started to fall off his head.

Hunk chuckled and raced back to his room for his own towel and pajamas. He rushed through his shower, a little too quickly for it to be truly relaxing, but it was an essential part of the ritual and he didn't want to keep Lance waiting. Finally, they stood in front of the mirrors, side by side, opening up Lance's bottles one at a time and using them together. Lance sometimes paused Hunk when his technique was bad and showed him to do it. He even got picky enough a couple of times to grab Hunk's hands and lower them to his sides, then rub the product in Hunk's skin himself.

"No, dude, you go in _little_ circles. Like this. See how much better that is?"

Hunk hummed, eyes falling shut as Lance rubbed _little_ circles into his temples and cheekbones. "Mmm, yeah. That is nice."

"Told you. Pay attention to me, I'm the master."

"Yeah, you are." Hunk was amused and sincere in equal measure. Lance truly was the master at self-care, and it was always a pleasure to join him. The others were crazy for thinking it was too fussy and time-consuming to bother with. That was the _point._ All this time spent doing little things, going through a long process step by step and simultaneously making your skin both look and feel amazing... It was the essence of relaxation.

Hunk knew it wasn't enough, not really. He could feel it in the small tremors of Lance's fingers, see it in the deep wrinkles underneath his eyes, the downturned corners of his mouth. Today had been horrible for Lance, and one meticulous skin care routine was not going to make all of that stress and pain go away. But it was a start. A good one.

When they were finished, Hunk helped Lance gather up all of his bottles and take them back to his room. Lance arranged them on his dresser in an artful pile, ready for the next time. Hunk looked around his room and rubbed the back of his neck. "You wanna hang out here for awhile? Or go to the lounge? Anything you want, man, I'm all yours for the evening."

Lance clicked his tongue. "You don't want to cook dinner or anything? I know you need to de-stress, too, and the kitchen usually does that for you."

Hunk shook his head. "There are plenty of leftovers in the fridge thing. Besides, not everyone is gonna be there, since Coran and Allura are gonna be stuck taking care of the refugees for awhile. It's not the same if I don't get to cook for everyone."

Lance nodded. "That's true." He looked into Hunk's face with a sigh, and yep, that exhaustion was still dragging on him, it was clear to see. "I was gonna head to Shiro's room, actually. Wanna come with?"

"Of course."

Lance scooped up the pillow and blanket off his bed, and they went. Shiro's room was just a few doors away down the hall, and it was already open, of course. It always was.

This was the home of the castle's Semi-Permanent Blanket Fort and Sleepover Zone, No Jerks Allowed, as declared by Lance and Pidge. The malleable Altean architecture had allowed them to expand Shiro's bed alcove to three or four times its original size, and then they had hung blankets over the opening, placed blossom lights inside, and piled in the blankets and pillows to create a veritable swamp of bedding.

One or two of the other crewmembers always spent the night with Shiro here, guarding him from nightmares and memories, unless he kicked them all out to try sleeping on his own again. Lance was still the most frequent cohabitant of the space, but they'd gotten to the point where Lance could spend the night in his own room pretty much anytime he wanted to, knowing that Shiro would be well-cared for. Still not ideal (Hunk knew Shiro got frustrated sometimes that he still couldn't go more than a night or two without needing company), but a vast improvement over the previous state of affairs, when either Shiro was entirely alone or Lance was the only one helping him.

Hunk and Lance piled into the bedding swamp, chatting about inconsequential things. Hunk drew up short with a yelp, and Lance went still, when a lump of blanket already inside the fort unexpectedly moved. Then a dark, touseled head peeked out, and Hunk's shoulders relaxed. "Hey, Keith. Didn't expect you to be here already. Did Shiro find you?"

Keith shook his head and slowly extricated himself from the blankets. He ended up leaning against the wall opposite from where Hunk and Lance sat, his eyes cast downward. He looked flushed and unhappy, mouth in a disconsolate scowl. Hunk tilted his head, not sure if he was seeing right in the dim light, but... Yeah, those were probably tear tracks down Keith's face. He'd hidden here to cry by himself. They must have startled him just as much as he'd startled them.

Lance plopped down into the bedding with a weary sigh, watching Keith mournfully but not approaching him, respecting his body language's request for space. Hunk couldn't help it, though. He dared to scoot closer, though he didn't get quite close enough to invade Keith's personal space. "Hey, buddy. You wanna talk about it?"

Keith started to shake his head, then paused. He tilted his head back against the wall and peered up at the blossom lights, watching them twinkle. "I just..."

Lance moved closer, too, leaning on Hunk's shoulder. "Were you thinking about the kid?" His voice was soft, hesitant, and Hunk's throat seized up.

Keith let his eyes fall shut in a slow blink, then opened them again. "No. I...it sounds heartless, but there's nothing we can do for him now."

Hunk made a noise of denial. "It's not heartless." He opened his mouth to go on, but Keith shook his head and cut him off.

Keith scrubbed his hands over his face. "No, I was thinking about... What if this happens again? There's no reason it won't, now that this tactic has occured to them. What if next time it's a race who doesn't have a miraculous clotting factor? What if it's a _bunch_ of kids, not just one? What if it's families, fathers and mothers and kids, and we...and we..."

Hunk's hand closed into a fist, and his throat tightened even more. He could barely breathe at the thought of it. Next time it might be him who had to make the impossible choice. Or Pidge, or Allura. What if the Empire figured out that Team Voltron was looking for Sam and Matt Holt and brought them out to use as leverage? How could any of them deal with that? They were so close now, the seven of them, so much like a family, that Sam and Matt felt like family to all of them, too, by the transitive property.

"Hey." Lance crab-walked closer, less hesitant now to reach out. He put out a hand, shaking minutely, and rested it on Keith's blanket-wrapped shoulder. "That's why we made the choice we did today. Part of the reason, anyway. We have to show them that this tactic doesn't work. If they know that we'll accept the collateral damage and destroy them all anyway, sentient shields are useless. It just puts their soldiers in a position where it's easy for us to slaughter them. So they'll have to stop doing it. It is..." He swallowed. "It is heartless, yes. As you said. But... We made the only choice we could."

Keith looked at him bleakly. "I know. But... They probably aren't going to give up with one trial. What if we have to do this again? I don't... I don't know if I can, Lance. This time was hard enough."

Lance had no answer for that. Neither did Hunk. Lance shook his head. Hunk closed his eyes.

Keith's body language was more open now, so Lance and Hunk settled down on either side of him, backs to the wall, and stared at the blossom lights.

"Maybe..." Hunk started slowly. "Maybe we should tell Allura that we need a break. Just for a few days. We've been doing these prison missions non-stop, and it's definitely wearing on all of us. Plus our allies are getting a little tired of taking in refugees. I think the Sylosians are basically at capacity already, and the Balmerans, too. It might be time to come up with a new plan, or at least tweak this one a little bit."

"I don't want to give up," Keith murmured, and Lance nodded.

"We all want to find Matt and Sam," Hunk said, because it was completely, uncontroversially true. "And we will. Just...maybe not tomorrow."

The thought sat heavy on all of them.

They heard the outside door of Shiro's room opening and a rush of footsteps, a clatter of armor falling on the floor, and a huff of frustrated breath. Then Pidge dove through the blanket opening straight into the middle of the pile of bedding. She landed on her stomach, limbs splayed, face buried in a pillow. She folded her arms over her head, and she screamed, loud despite how muffled it was.

All three boys tensed, but didn't move, just staring at her. Pidge was still wearing her underarmor, having only stripped off the outer plating, and she still smelled faintly of the mud planet below. Lance wrinkled his nose, Hunk winced, and Keith didn't react.

After a long moment to take this in, Hunk slowly sat forward off the wall. The relaxation he had managed to achieve with Lance was wearing away, first damaged by Keith's distress, and now by Pidge's uncharacteristic behavior. Sure, she had her moments of anger and doubt like the rest of them, but it was incredibly rare to see her so enraged and frustrated that she had to scream into a pillow.

"Pidge?" Hunk moved a little closer and hovered a hand over her back, then lightly set down. "Are you okay? Did something happen with the refugees?"

Pidge made a muffled noise into the pillow. It sounded affirmative, though Hunk wasn't sure which question she was responding to. He hummed in curiosity and scooted closer, settling down at her side with his hand flat on the middle of her back. "Another dead end, huh? No one had news about your family?" He rubbed her back in smooth circles, heart aching with sympathy.

A long, long moment. Then Pidge shook her head.

Hunk halted for a moment, confused. "No? So someone _did_ have news about your family?"

Pidge nodded. Lance caught his breath, and Keith blinked and sat forward, hands closing into fists at his sides. Hunk glanced at them, then back to Pidge.

She was so upset. Whatever she had learned, it must not have been good. "Can...can you tell us?" Hunk asked. "It's okay if you don't want to." He heard his voice tremble. He desperately wanted to know, but he didn't want to cause her more pain. Shiro would be along soon, Hunk had no doubt. He could tell them what had happened if Pidge didn't want to or wasn't able to.

Pidge sucked in a few harsh, choking breaths, back heaving under Hunk's hand. Then she slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position, hair sticking up in wild clumps and face wrenched with distress. She looked at Hunk, then at Keith and Lance still sitting against the wall, both of them staring at her without blinking, hardly breathing. They all really, really wanted to hear Pidge's news, no matter what it was.

Pidge snorted and rubbed her hand under her nose, then looked into Hunk's face. "Someone had news." Her voice was as rough as her appearance. "But he refused to tell us. Shiro and Allura are still arguing with him, but I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to come here and yell about it." She looked at Lance and Hunk, showered and moisturized and in their pajamas, and she let out a mournful sigh. "Sorry for barging in like this. I should have cleaned up and calmed down first."

"No, it's okay." Hunk kept rubbing her back. "Do you want us to fight that guy for you?" He tilted his chin at Keith and Lance. "All of us will do it, absolutely. Just give us five minutes to suit up, and we'll be there, bayards blazing. I can't believe he won't tell you." His voice went high-pitched in outrage. "How dare he. Why the quiznak not? What is _wrong_ with that guy?"

Keith and Lance both nodded in solidarity. Pidge let out a harsh chuckle and rubbed her face again. "No, don't. It's... It's not his fault, not really. I get it. He said... He wants us to save his planet, first. Then he'll tell us about Dad and Matt. He just... He's trying to protect what's his. I get it, and I don't want to fight him or hurt him. It just, it's really frustrating, that's all." She ground her teeth together and let out another strangled noise, fists pounding down on the bedclothes. "Ugh! Why does everything have to be so hard?"

"What the what now?" Lance asked, incredulous. "We would save his planet without blackmail, no problem. It's what we _do._ Has he never heard of Voltron or something? He doesn't know that already?"

Pidge sighed. "Yeah, that's what we all were trying to tell him. Me, Shiro, and Allura. We told him over and over again that we would save his planet no matter what, it was the paladin way to answer all requests for assistance. But he just keeps insisting that we help _his_ people _first."_

Keith grunted in disapproval and flopped over on Lance's shoulder, but he seemed too wrung out to respond with his usual passion. They were all tired, all done in by the events of the day. Hunk gave Keith and Lance a concerned glance, and was marginally reassured to see them leaning against each other so easily. At least all of the paladins were a cohesive team now, no matter what difficulties assailed them. Everything they were dealing with would be a lot harder to bear if they didn't trust each other, but they did. Their teamwork and trust was rock solid, and Hunk was grateful for that.

Hunk rubbed Pidge's back. "Well, maybe Shiro and Allura will be able to convince him. We just have to believe that everything will work out."

Pidge nodded miserably.

By the time Shiro joined them, expression wan and disgruntled, Pidge had cleaned up and all four of them were sacked out in the blanket fort, half-asleep and leaning on each other. Shiro didn't seem surprised to see them all here, just gave a quiet greeting as he rolled onto his back in the middle of the fort, already showered and in his full-length pajamas. Pidge lifted her head up from where it was resting on Hunk's calf and looked into his face, then grunted and lay back down.

Shiro sighed and gave her a commiserating look. "Trazo will not be moved. That's his name, the Unilu we were arguing with. Trazo. He finally gave us that, though little else. He doesn't trust us, and he doesn't want to wait any longer than he has to for his people to be rescued. So Allura is a laying in a course for his planet, Belikor. It's an Unilu colony that's been under Galra rule for a long time, but lately it's been getting harsher, as evidenced by Trazo being imprisoned. According to him, his crime was very minor, but he was convicted of treason and packed into the prison system anyway. After we set them free, Trazo assures us that he can direct us on where to go to find Matthew and Samuel Holt, but that's all he's giving us for now."

"I'll give him something for now," Lance grumbled, pounding his fist into his palm without even shifting the rest of his body where he lay jammed between Hunk and Keith. Keith chuckled darkly, making Lance's head bounce, but didn't otherwise comment. Hunk just shook his head.

Shiro rolled over on his side to face them and gave Lance an understanding smile, his face softer now as he let his frustration with the situation fade. "Let's not worry about it, okay? There's nothing else to be done. We should rest up tonight, and tomorrow we'll get all the info we can from Trazo and do recon before making our plans for liberating Belikor."

"What about the Anabaxi who still need treatment?" Hunk asked.

"We're bringing the rescued prisoners along on the ship, and we'll keep rotating people in and out of the pods as quickly as we can without risking anyone's health. Most of the Anabaxi want to return to Anabax once they've recovered, but we'll deal with that when the time comes."

"So we're officially considering that a liberated planet, not just a prison raid now?" Pidge asked. "That'll add to the load of planets we have to defend. Belikor too, come to think of it."

"Yeah." Shiro rubbed a hand over his face. "Like I said, let's not worry about that tonight, okay? We've just been through a rough mission. We need to heal up before we take on the next one. No use borrowing trouble."

"Sure."

They tried to relax. Lance made a joke, Keith joined in, and they all started conversing as lightly as they were able. Still, a strained atmosphere hung over them, dampening everyone's mood.

The paladins drifted off to sleep, one by one. Hunk didn't even remember falling asleep. He felt himself drifting into a sort of meditative haze, where he could hear the light buzz of Keith and Lance's conversation, undergirded with something warm and solid and pleasant that provided a foundation for his world, his consciousness, his everything. The yellow lion, calm and sure and steady. He wasn't quite sure when he had started to be able to feel her presence so strongly, even when they were separated by the bulk of the castleship, but it was a welcome addition to his mental landscape and had been for quite some time.

Hunk slept surprisingly well, all things considered. And when he woke the next morning, it all started again.


	5. Chapter 5

The next day Lance was tired and irritable. Everything seemed a little too difficult, a little too taxing. He wanted to blame it on bad dreams or at least not enough sleep, but he honestly couldn't remember any of his dreams, and the paladins had all fallen asleep relatively early after the draining events of the day. He hadn't woken up in the middle of the night to soothe Shiro from a bad dream, either. If one happened, one of the others must have taken care of it.

He was just...tired. He woke to Hunk jostling his arm, his voice coming through as if muffled by water. "Lance. Lance, buddy. It's time to wake up. Get up, c'mon." It went on long enough that even Hunk's patience was starting to sound strained by the time Lance finally pried his eyes open and grunted up at him.

"Ge...gerroff." Lance swiped at Hunk's hand on his shoulder, clumsy and ineffectual. He rolled over on his side, putting his back to Hunk, and curled up, eyes falling shut again. He just wanted to sleep.

Hunk sighed so deeply that it shook the entire bed. "C'mon, dude. Everyone else is already up. You're the last, as usual. We're en route to Belikor and we'll be arriving soon. We gotta debrief Trazo and do recon and figure out a plan of attack. Busy day, man, up up up." He chirped the last words in an obnoxiously cheerful voice, like Lance's mom when she was chivvying him and his siblings out of bed on a school morning to get them ready for the bus.

"You can fight the war without me for one day," Lance grumbled into the bedding under his head. "'M tired. Lemme sleep."

Hunk made a loud, exasperated noise, then grabbed Lance's arm with both hands and shook him so hard it rattled Lance's teeth in his head. "Lance! Get up!"

"Hunk!" Lance popped to a sitting position, face screwed up in anger, and yelled in his face. "No! Butt out of my business, nosy!"

He plopped back down and buried himself in the blankets again. That brief exertion had left him dizzy and breathless, panting hard. It subsided quickly, though, as the desire for sleep took over again. He was so tired, feeling weighted down in every limb, and the bed was warm and comfy, and the war could wait...

Hunk mumbled something irritated behind him, but he finally gave up. He stood up from the bed, shaking the mattress with his agitated movements, and gave it a kick for good measure that Lance barely felt vibrating through the bed alcove. Lance couldn't understand any of the words coming out of Hunk's mouth. He was vaguely aware of the annoyance and anger in his voice, and normally it would bother him to be the cause of it, but right now it didn't matter. Lance didn't care. He was going back to sleep.

He drifted, unaware, for a few timeless moments. The there was an enormous jolt and movement, the entire world shifting and jerking, and Lance's eyes flew open in alarm, heart hammering in his chest. Were they under attack, had the Galra...

He hit the cold floor with a jerk that knocked out his breath, teeth slamming together, warm blankets suddenly wrested away. He found himself staring up into the face of Shiro, standing over him in full armor with a scowl on his face and his hands full of Lance's blankets. He had dragged Lance out of bed and dumped him on the floor in his pajamas.

Lance blinked up at him, rapid, wide awake now. He was beginning to feel sheepish, but he tried for casual. "Um. Hi, Shiro."

Shiro looked like he was seething, and Lance tried not to cringe back at the sight. "What's this I hear about you yelling at Hunk for trying to wake you up?"

Now Lance did cringe. "Um. I was half-asleep?"

Shiro's eyebrows lowered in a forbidding line, and yep, Lance felt about two inches tall now. Crap. "That doesn't excuse hurting his feelings."

Lance's gaze shifted to the left, where Hunk was hovering behind Shiro and leaning out around his body, looking like a little kid who had called in the playground monitor on someone who was bullying him. Lance winced. "I'm sorry." His voice was tiny. He _felt_ tiny.

Shiro nudged him with his toe. "Get up. Get dressed. We have a long day ahead of us, and we need your help. We can't do this without you."

The words were stern, but Lance heard the warmth and encouragement in them, too. Shiro really meant that, every single word. Lance pushed himself up to sitting, though his head swooped with the movement. "Yeah. I'll be right there. Sorry." He looked back at Hunk again. "Really. I'm sorry."

Hunk nodded, eyes softening, then followed Shiro out as he left the room. They were probably going to go talk to Trazo. Lance really should be there. He sighed and slumped, then pushed himself to his feet and went to his room to get dressed.

Everything was so hard. His movements felt sluggish, constrained, as if was wearing extra weights on his wrists and ankles. Nothing was there, though. It was just him. Just Lance, being a jerk and yelling at his best friend for no reason.

Was he depressed about yesterday? Lance thought about it as he got ready, turning the thought over and over in his mind. They had talked a lot about mental health since his breakdown a few months ago, the one that had taken such a long time to fix and actually necessitated Blue taking him over for a while when he would have lost himself in self-loathing and despair. He knew he should tell the others if he started feeling like that again, or anything remotely similar. They were all supposed to be open about their feelings now, not just for their own health but for the good of the team. Always easier said than done, of course, but they tried.

Blue purred in his mind, nudging up against his thoughts. Lance smiled and mentally nudged back, feeling like a kitten rubbing against a mama cat. Blue was monitoring his mental health, too, always. She was concerned about him at the moment, but it was fuzzy and nebulous, nothing so concrete as that day everything fell apart, then was slowly put back together with the help of everyone on the team.

No, Lance didn't think he was depressed at the moment. Yesterday definitely bothered him, and it would continue to do so for a long time. More images to add to the collection, more moments that would come back at random times for no reason at all or whenever he happened to let his mind drift in their direction. He was getting used to them now, in a sick kind of way. Or maybe a healthy kind of way. It was hard to tell the difference, sometimes.

But he wasn't depressed. He was just...tired. It was stupid and useless, and there was no reason for it. He just...couldn't get enough air.

Lance stood straight and sucked in a deep breath, feeling his chest expand with the movement. It ended with a sudden cough, jerking painfully at his throat, and he doubled over and coughed into his fist for a moment. No, he could breathe fine. He was pretty sure. That was sometimes hard to tell, too. He felt short of breath often, for no reason at all, no matter how everyone tried to reassure him that the pneumonia was gone and the air was good. It was just another stupid thing his body did to him now.

Lance finished his self-analysis, then shook his head and walked out the door of his room, helmet tucked under his arm. Yeah, he didn't feel a hundred percent right now, neither mentally or physically. But that was hardly new. No need to tell anyone. He wasn't depressed. He could breathe just fine. There was plenty of air. Right.

In the control room, everyone was gathered around Trazo, who was looking over charts spread over several screens in the air. Lance glanced over the charts, but didn't recognize the planet. Must be Belikor, which was confirmed by Trazo's agitated monologue. "No, that's not right... Yes, that, that's still the same..." He kept pointing at different features on the map and commentating on their correctness.

Lance moseyed up to the back of the group and watched the proceedings with drooping eyes. "Are we there yet?"

Allura turned away from the screen to give him a genteel smile, almost diplomatic. Lance winced internally, seeing the flesh around her eyes twitch. She was probably holding back from scolding him for his tardiness because of the stranger in their midst.

"Almost," she said in a pleasant, neutral tone. "We are in Belikor's solar system, approaching the planet slowly and weaving amongst the other planets to mask the castle's presence. We don't know yet what kind of defenses the Galra will have mounted there, so we're taking it slow."

Lance nodded his understanding and tilted his chin at the screens. "So those are the maps pulled up from the castle database?"

"Ten thousand years out of date," Trazo grumbled, flicking at another feature on the map to edit it. Coran grumbled back, engrossed in watching him work. He was instinctively protective of the castle, even though he knew very well the database wasn't correct anymore and had caused problems in the past.

"We need better data to plan our attack," Shiro said, giving Lance a look. "We were thinking that Blue's sonar scan might be the quickest and quietest way to do it, if you can get close enough to do it without being seen."

"Ah." Lance refrained from nodding again. He was starting to feel like he'd done nothing but nod since he'd arrived. If he'd gotten up on time, he probably would have heard this already and they wouldn't need to catch him up now. He reached his arms above his head and interlinked his fingers, pulling back and forth to stretch his muscles. "So you want me to do a solo mission, then. I gotcha." He gave Shiro the finger guns and a wink.

Shiro gave him serious smile, not quite masking the concern in his eyes. "As long as you're up to it. Are you feeling all right after yesterday? If there's a reason you felt the need to sleep in this morning, I want you to tell me."

Everyone turned around to look at Lance at that, even Trazo. Lance gulped and almost shrank back at the sudden, overwhelming attention. His team just looked worried for him, of course, but Trazo looked suspicious, like he wasn't sure Lance could be trusted with this task. It didn't feel good.

So Lance straightened up and puffed out his chest, of course. "Nah, I'm good. You know me, man. Team player." He pointed his thumb at his chest. "I'll go get that scan and be back at the castle lickety-split, no sweat."

Shiro smiled reluctantly, and it seemed real, though Allura's smile barely reached her eyes. Hunk shook his head with a fond grin, and Pidge rolled her eyes. Lance gave them all a thumbs up, then turned around and started making his way to the tube that led to his lion.

He wasn't totally surprised to feel the hand on his shoulder, but it still made him jump slightly. He turned to find Keith at his side, looking at him with naked worry. Keith was never good at downplaying his emotions.

"Hey, are you sure you're okay? You're not faking again, are you? You know, showing what you think we want to see? You said you were gonna stop doing that."

Lance drew up short, flummoxed. Then he gave him a smile and carded a hand through his hair sheepishly. "Geez Louise, you guys are so careful now. I can't get away with anything, can I?"

Keith frowned and narrowed his eyes. "So that's a yes."

Lance scoffed and waved a hand. "Not really. I mean, kind of. I don't feel a hundred percent, that's true, but can you really expect me to? We have a job to do. I can do the job." He stuck out his lower lip and wibbled it, deliberately staring into Keith's eyes. "Don't tell me I can't do the job. Please, dude. You'll make me sad."

Keith hesitated, then rolled his eyes. He didn't fall for the trap. Darn. "Fine, I won't say you can't do the job. But I'll come along with you."

Before Lance could protest, Keith turned and called to the group. "Hey, Shiro! I'm gonna go with Lance, okay?"

Shiro looked toward them, eyes sharp. He took in their body language, Keith still with his hand on Lance's shoulder, then nodded firmly. "Yeah. Great idea. Keep in contact with the ship, okay?"

Keith nodded, then took Lance's elbow and steered him toward the main door. "C'mon, we can't go on the zip line if we're going together."

"I dunno, I think we could swing it," Lance said, remembering how Nyma had hung off him that one time. Secretly, though, he was relieved. With as weak and tired as he was feeling today, he wasn't completely sure he would have been able to hold his own weight all the way down the zip line, let alone Keith's. It would have been cramped and awkward to ride the speeder together, too, which was one thing when it was a pretty girl and another thing when it was your teammate who didn't do well in close quarters.

Yeah, taking the long way around was probably the best plan.

Keith kept a hand on his shoulder all the way down to the hangars, preemptively protective. Lance might have been annoyed if he hadn't been feeling honestly pretty shaky and in need of support right now. Okay, he was still a little annoyed. It would have been worse on pretty much any other day though.

"Seriously, man, I can handle it," he said as they walked up the ramp and entered Blue's cockpit. He felt the lion rumbling around him, pleased with his presence and that of his teammate and friend. She was getting used to ferrying Lance and the others around on non-combat missions, since they'd instituted the policy of "use Blue for transport unless there's a good reason not to."

"Yeah, but I was useless back there on the command deck anyway," Keith said. "Nothing much I can contribute to a battle plan before we even have accurate information. Trazo was really starting to get on my nerves, too."

Okay, Lance could appreciate that. He was doing Keith a favor by getting him out of that situation. Yeah.

He snickered as he sat in the pilot chair and started bringing up screens, Blue purring to life and rising to her feet as she prepared to to launch. "Okay, Mr. Grumpy-pants. Glad I could be of service."

Keith grumbled good-naturedly and settled behind him with a hand on the back of his seat. "Let's just get this mission done and get a good look at what we're facing, okay, Sharpshooter?"

Lance flashed him a smile. Keith rarely used Lance's self-declared nickname. He must be feeling particularly indulgent today. "Yeah, let's do this."

They flew out of the castle, surrounded by stars.


	6. Chapter 6

Keith could hardly remember the time when he'd thought that Lance was a bad pilot. His flying with Blue was now so smooth, so controlled, that Keith could almost have been convinced that they were sitting still if he hadn't seen the stars moving outside the viewscreens. He knew it was partly because Lance and Blue had reached level three in the paladin bond or whatever, but some of that was Lance's skill, too.

He held onto the back of Lance's chair and watched him as much as he watched the view ahead, quietly observing. How calm and absorbed he was, eyes gently drifting here and there as he looked at differently readouts, hands and feet barely seeming to move against the levers and pedals. Blue juked and dipped gracefully, flying through the moons of a gas giant as they sneaked closer to Belikor's orbit.

Lance looked for a vantage point that would bring them as close to Belikor as possible without giving them away. Keith's attention shifted to the scans on the readouts as Lance muttered under his breath, then hit a button several times in quick succession. Keith wasn't sure what he was doing, but Blue understood. The lion settled to a halt, crouching on the rim of an asteroid drifting just beyond the elliptical of the gas giant, and Keith looked forward again.

Blue's view zoomed in, and the distant shape of Belikor came into focus. Keith squinted, taking in the glint of sunlight off metal in the atmosphere. Satellites? Galra outposts?

"I think this is as close as we're gonna be able to get," Lance murmured, almost to himself, but he glanced up at Keith and flashed him a smile. On most days that smile would be cocky, boastful, but all Keith saw this time was exhaustion. Lance's smiles and gestures seemed rote and prepared, not flowing off the cuff like usual. He could protest that he wasn't faking all he wanted, but Keith was pretty sure something was wrong.

He wasn't a hundred percent sure, though. He still wasn't perfect at reading people, though he'd gotten better, especially with his team. Still, he felt like he'd spent enough time with Lance, at least, trying to make up for his earlier mistakes, that he should have a solid grasp on what his body language actually meant, even when he was trying to fake something.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he had to ask. Again.

Lance's smile vanished in a roll of the eyes, and he tipped his head back and made an exasperated noise at the ceiling. "For the tenth time, dude, _yes._ I'm okay. Totally. Absolutely. You can stop asking now."

"You're not depressed about yesterday?" Keith knew this was pushing it, probably too blunt and direct, but he couldn't help himself. Lance was usually kind enough to put up with his bluntness, anyway, since he understood now that it was just how Keith was.

Lance scowled, and for the first time his movement was jerky as he brought up another readout on Blue's central screen. "Yes. I'm sure. I was just tired this morning, that's all. I wanted to sleep. If I had known that this was going to be your reaction, I would have been a lot quicker to get up, just to avoid this now."

"Lance, being atypically tired is a symptom of depression."

Lance blew out a breath and narrowed his eyes at Keith in weary exasperation. "Yes, I know. I promise you, my man, that's not this. I did some self-analysis, okay? I know I need to take care of myself. I cataloged my emotions and self-talk and all that stuff, and I'm certain I'm not depressed about yesterday. I'm just tired."

Keith hesitated.

 _"Physically_ tired," Lance emphasized. He turned back to his screens with deliberate care. "Now drop it. I'm begging you. I know my limits."

Keith still wasn't sure, but he dropped it. He settled his hands on the back of the pilot chair and looked more closely at the readout Lance was studying. "Is that the trajectory for the sonic cannon?"

Lance nodded absently, his eyes on the screen. "Lining up the shot...now."

Keith felt it when Blue released the shot, a deep vibration that shivered through the entire structure of the lion. The sonic blast was a sound beyond human hearing, resonating in his body instead of his ears. He knew it would make no sound winging through space, either. Hopefully the Galra on Belikor wouldn't have the equipment to trace it.

They had used this technique to successfully map Galra structures without being detected in the past, but this was the first time Keith had been present. He watched the screen Lance was staring at as information pinged back from the sonar burst, filling in landmass and structures all over the planetary map. He could see some features that matched the maps they had pulled up from the castle's database as well as some that didn't match at all.

A sudden spike of anxiety shivered over Keith's shoulders. He shifted from foot to foot and looked around the observation windows of the cockpit, inexplicably paranoid. He suddenly felt horribly exposed, crouched out here alone on a barren asteroid, too far away for the castle to cover them. It made no sense, but Keith had learned to trust his instincts.

He leaned over Lance's chair and poked his shoulder. "We done now? Let's get back to the castle."

Lance hummed, fingers tapping over a keyboard. "One more, just to fill in the details."

Keith glanced at the map. It looked plenty detailed to him. "I think that's good. We should go."

Without looking, Lance reached up and grabbed his finger before it could poke his shoulder again. "Just a couple of ticks."

Keith growled and wrenched his finger free from Lance's grip, and Lance chuckled. Again the sonic cannon went off, smooth and powerful, and Keith felt a high hum in his back teeth. More details filled in on the map of Belikor as the information came back, nothing critical as far as Keith could tell. It was like bumping up the resolution from 1080 to 2160 on a computer graphic. Nice, but not a revelation.

"Ready to go now?" Keith prompted again.

"Yeah." Lance nodded and leaned back in his chair, hands on the control bars as he guided Blue into a one-eighty turn.

Then a red light began to flash, and Lance cursed and ducked back down to the asteroid surface, Blue crouching on the rock like a wild animal sensing danger. Keith's eyes flicked to the HUD. Two shapes flashed on the screen, the familiar silhouettes of Galra fighters.

They had changed course and were flying directly toward their hiding place. Fortunately, there was no indication yet that they were calling for backup. Perhaps they had detected Blue as an anomaly and were coming in for a closer look, but hadn't yet figured out what she was.

"Must be a patrol," Lance gritted, growling in his throat. "Quiznak! We were so close to getting away clean."

Keith's lip curled. Of course the Galra had patrols searching the solar system at all times. He should have realized it earlier. His instinctive paranoia made sense now. "Lance, we gotta take 'em out before they report back."

"I know."

Blue was already leaping forward into space, a lion springing from the brush to ambush prey. The fighters didn't react for a crucial split second, hanging in the air, and then Blue was among them, blasting and diving. One fighter was obliterated in an instant, breaking apart into cosmic dust, but the other was just far enough away that Lance couldn't get them both in the same shot. The existing fighter fell abruptly out of sight and swooped toward the gas giant, and Lance and Blue whirled to follow.

Keith's hands clenched down on the back of the pilot chair, but he kept his mouth firmly shut. Lance didn't speak, given entirely over to the task of dogfighting, but Keith could hear his breath. It was coming hard, suddenly, panting and rushed. Blue shot at the fighter. A long string of laser blasts stuttered out, tracking the fighter as it juked and rolled and sought escape.

A ping from one of the monitors let them know that the fighter had managed to get a transmission out just as a laser tore the small craft apart. Lance didn't slow, didn't take time to recover. He flew as fast as he could back to the gas giant's moons. After a moment, Keith understood why.

One of the moons was solid and rocky, probably could have been a planet in its own right if it hadn't been roped in by the gas giant's gravity well. Lance directed Blue straight there, and they dove into a series of barren canyons dug deep into the moon's surface. Lance's eyes flicked over the screens, drinking in the sensory data, and he gave a short nod as a decision was made. A smooth pull of the control levers, and Blue pivoted on her heel and raced toward a cliffside shadowed by an overhang. As they approached, Keith saw why: a cave entrance big enough to accomodate the lion led back into the rock, pitch black and inviting.

Lance guided Blue into the moon cave, then swung around and set down facing the opening. Blue shut down almost instantly, hunkering to the rocky surface and going dark. They waited in tense silence, only Lance's heavy breathing breaking the atmosphere. After a short time, Keith saw the HUD light up with more shapes, more silhouettes. The fighter had gotten out a call for backup, and now that backup was on its way.

"They might...not find us," Lance said, still panting. Keith looked at him in concern and saw his chest heaving inside his armor. Lance didn't look at him, too busy watching the screens. "If we got in here fast enough, went dark fast enough..."

Keith's breath caught in his throat. "Lance, calm down. You need to breathe."

It came out almost as an order, harsh and barked, though he didn't mean it that way. Lance looked at him over his shoulder, eyes wide and panicked. "I...I can't..."

He stood abruptly from the pilot's chair. He tore off his helmet and dropped it on the floor, and then his hands scrabbled at the edges of his breastplate. His breath wheezed and stuttered, echoing around the small space, rough and loud and much too fast. It was a horrible sound, and Keith gritted his teeth. He stepped closer and reached out to grab the breastplate. He helped Lance strip it off and drop it next to his helmet, then grabbed Lance's shoulders with both hands.

"Lance, breathe," he said again, more softly this time. "You're having a panic attack. You need to calm down. Everything's okay. The air is good. The pneumonia is gone."

Lance shook his head, which was lowered as he stared at the floor, chest struggling. "No, I'm not... Th-that's not...what this is..."

Keith squeezed his shoulders. "Don't talk, just breathe. Follow me, okay?" He took in a deep breath, and Lance tried to follow, but his chest hitched before it rose far enough to match Keith's movement. He coughed, body jerking, and pulled in another wheezing breath that seemed to cut at Keith's eardrums. His hands rose, fingers clawing at the air, and got a hold on Keith's elbows. His hands were shaking, Keith realized. His whole body was shaking.

Keith ducked his head and tried to look into his face. Lance's eyes were squeezed shut, and his face was too pale, almost gray, clammy with sweat. Keith noted with great alarm that his lips looked dark, too. As if...as if he wasn't getting enough oxygen.

"Oh, quiznak."

Lance didn't respond, didn't try to speak. He couldn't spare the breath. He shook his head, then let go of Keith's elbows and pressed his fingers against his temples. He swayed in Keith's grip, knees bending.

"Let's sit down, okay?" Keith's voice had gone high with fear. He had to control it better, had to keep calm, especially if Lance couldn't. He drew a breath to steady himself and tried again. "You're dizzy, right? Let's sit down."

Lance nodded, head drooping weakly, and let Keith guide him to the floor. They half-sat, half-knelt there, Keith still holding Lance's shoulders, Lance with his head down as he continued trying to get his breathing under control. Keith talked to him in a low, steady stream of encouragement. "You're doing great. It's fine. You're fine. Everything's gonna be okay."

Occasionally Keith glanced at the HUD, catching the current position of the Galra ships outside. He didn't know what would happen if they were caught. He didn't know if Lance would be able to pilot Blue right now, or if Blue would fight on her own. He felt uniquely helpless. All he could do right now was talk, and that was far from his best skill. Pretty much the bottom of the list.

After a few minutes, Lance seemed much calmer. His breath still sounded labored but was no longer quite so loud and grating. He drooped in Keith's grip, one hand weakly hold his forearm while the other lay in his lap. His head was still down, eyes closed, and he was shockingly listless, but he had a little more color in his face.

Keith let go of his shoulder with one hand and patted it awkwardly. "Doing better? Is it easier to breathe now?"

Lance nodded, then sluggishly raised his head to look Keith in the face. His eyes blinked open, slow and blue. "I think... I think I'm sick..."

Keith nodded, his heart a lump in his throat. "Yeah, I gathered that. It's why you were tired this morning, huh?"

"I 'member..." Lance blinked again, eyes drifting away, then shivered and looked to Keith. "I remember feeling like this before. On the jungle planet. When I got pneumonia."

A chill ran over Keith's shoulders. That was the last thing he had wanted to hear. "You think you have pneumonia again?"

Lance closed his eyes and slumped back against the pilot's chair. All of his strength seemed to have drained out of him. "This is how that felt. Can't...catch my breath. Can't keep up. Can't... _do_ stuff."

Keith chewed on his bottom lip. He remembered, vaguely, some things Coran had said while Lance was in the pod the last time he caught pneumonia. The cryo pod could heal a lot of things, but there were still consequences for grave injuries and illnesses. Scars, things like that. And a sickness like pneumonia left its mark, too. People who had had pneumonia once were more susceptible to it in the future.

And Anabax... Yeah, that place was definitely a breeding ground for illnesses. That was why the natives had developed rapid clotting abilities, to protect their bodies from pathogens. Lance had probably picked something up there, especially with all the stress supressing his immune system. Or maybe he'd already been getting sick and that environment had only sped things up.

"Can you fly?" Keith asked. "We...we really need to get back to the Castle of Lions."

Lance nodded and offered up a smile, though it was far from the cocky, cheerful version he'd given him before this episode. "I could be on my deathbed and still be able to fly Blue."

Keith grimaced. "Don't joke like that."

Lance winced. "Ah, sorry. I guess Shiro's sense of humor might have rubbed off on me."

"It's a bad sense of humor. I don't like it."

Lance chuckled breathlessly. "Sorry."

Keith shook his head and held his shoulder tighter in preparation for hauling him up. "Let's just go home."

Lance got to his feet without too much trouble, with Keith's help, but dropped back into the pilot's chair with a gusty sigh that seemed far too relieved for such a short trip. His fingers wrapped loosely around the control levers, and he watched the HUD with eyes only half-open. Despite the urgency of the situation, he looked half a breath from nodding off.

Keith moved up beside the chair and rested his hand on his shoulder, watching the HUD. The Galra ships seemed to be moving in an organized pattern, possibly a search grid. No way to know if or when they would find them or give it up as a bad cause. They had a wait in front of them.

It made Keith want to yell and stomp his feet. They needed to get Lance back to the Castle _now._

Why were they even hiding? It was just to preserve the element of surprise. It wasn't that critical. They should just jump out, rip a hole through the fleet, and hightail it back. They could deal with the battle later.

He opened his mouth to say this, but Lance beat him to it. He looked up at him, then raised one hand and patted Keith's hand on his shoulder. "Don't look so worried, samurai. We're gonna be fine."

Keith eyed him doubtfully, nose wrinkling. "Why are you so calm?"

This was pretty much Lance's worst-case scenario. He was afraid of not being able to breathe, had a phobia about it, and now here he was trapped out in space far away from medical help and had just figured out that he had pneumonia again. Keith would have expected this to send him into a spiral. Apparently the earlier trouble breathing hadn't been a panic attack, merely a physical reaction to battle stress, but Keith was surprised that the difficulty breathing hadn't triggered a true panic attack in the poor guy.

Lance still looked tired, near exhausted, but the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. "Why am I not panicking? I dunno, dude. I guess maybe because you're here. Thanks for coming along, even though I didn't want you to."

Keith's heart swelled. He managed to smile back, then squeezed Lance's shoulder, firm and strong. "All right, then. I'm glad to hear it. And no problem, no problem at all."

They waited.


	7. Chapter 7

Lance and Keith were taking longer than expected to return from their mission. Shiro was trying very hard not to panic. They had known that Blue probably wouldn't be able to keep in contact on a stealth mission. But it was supposed to be a quick run. A varga, maybe two. It was now running on four vargas, and still nothing.

Shiro kept wandering away from the group on the bridge to check the scanners, which were in passive mode to prevent the Galra from detecting their presence in the outer reaches of the solar system. The symbol of the blue lion hadn't moved for quite some time, parked on the moon of a gas giant within spitting distance (metaphorically speaking) of Belikor. Other blips showed on the scanners, and they could have been Galra ships, even, but Shiro couldn't get more detail without switching to active sensors. If Lance was fighting, though, surely Blue's symbol would be moving. Instead, it was just sitting still.

Each time he checked and found no change, Shiro huffed out a breath in frustration, then went back to the group. Trazo and Allura were deep in a strategy session, Coran offering occasional opinions while Pidge and Hunk listened, sometimes attentively and sometimes with glazed eyes. They kept glancing toward the scanner, too. Shiro ought to be paying more attention to the talk, probably, but he couldn't concentrate while his younger brothers were out there in danger and he didn't know what was happening to them.

Finally, he went back to the scanner and saw that Blue wasn't on the gas giant's moon. Shiro panicked for a moment, eyes darting around to find her symbol again, but then he saw that she was almost back at the castle. The boys had finished their mission and were heading home.

Shiro breathed out in relief and activated the comm. "Lance, good to see on you on your way back. How did it go?"

To his surprise, it was Keith's voice that answered instead of Lance's. His voice was tense, almost cracking. "Mission went fine, but Lance isn't doing so good. Can someone meet us at Blue's hangar?"

Shiro looked over at the group, eyes wide, and exchanged a panicked glance with Coran. The conversation had stopped the moment he keyed the comm, and even Trazo looked disconcerted.

Shiro pivoted to face the screen and focused on Keith's voice. "What happened? Was there a battle? Is Lance injured?"

"No. I mean, kind of. There was a little bit of a scuffle, but we handled it. Lance isn't injured, though. He's sick."

Bile surged in Shiro's throat. Oh no. This was the last thing they needed. That Lance needed.

He was moving before he realized, striding toward the door to head down to Blue's hangar. He switched the channel over to his helmet comm from the bridge communicator so he could keep talking as he walked. "Tell me his symptoms."

"Weakness. Fatigue. A fever...he's sweating. He's coughed a little, but not much. And... Shiro, he's having trouble catching his breath. He thinks he has pneumonia again."

Shiro's lip curled in a snarl. Suddenly, Lance's unwillingness to get out of bed this morning and his listless attitude once he joined them made perfect sense. They should have realized earlier that something was wrong. Of course Lance had tried to push through it, preferring to believe anything but that he had caught that awful illness again, but Shiro should have been paying more attention.

Footsteps to his right drew his attention, and he turned his head to see that Coran was keeping pace with him, walking briskly down the hallway with his face grim and eyes focused ahead. Shiro was grateful for the company, not least because he had urgent questions that Coran could answer.

"Can we get a pod ready for Lance?"

Coran shook his head briskly. "They are all currently full, with more folks in critical condition waiting to use them. Unless Lance is at death's door, I cannot in good conscience prematurely stop the healing process for any of the current occupants." He turned his head and gave Shiro a look, grim and understanding. "Also, I'm not sure how effective a healing pod would be against this ailment."

Shiro blinked. "But last time..."

"Last time, Lance had a number of pressing injuries that were worsening his condition, such as broken ribs and dehydration. The illness itself had done damage to his lungs that the cryo-replenisher was able to repair before it got worse. But even that time, the illness itself was still beaten back by medicine, not technology. You wouldn't know this, since you went into cryo at the same time, but I administered a hefty dose of antibiotics before we placed Lance in the replenisher. The machine accelerated the healing process, but it is always less efficient against disease than it is against injury. It's one reason we don't bother using a cryo-replenisher for the slipperies, besides the fact that that sickness is rather minor, similar to your human 'colds.' It would be a waste of resources."

Shiro scowled and opened his mouth, and Coran stopped walking and turned to face him fully, grabbing his shoulder and making him look into his face. His expression was soft, his eyes full of compassion. "Not that I'm saying that doing anything to relieve Lance's pain is a waste of resources. Far from it. If this new bout of pneumonia becomes severe and beyond our control, of course I will do whatever it takes to make sure he heals, including ejecting anyone else currently using a healing pod. But hopefully we caught this in time and we'll be able to cure it with less intrusive methods, yes? The pneumonia can't have progressed that much. He seemed fine yesterday."

Shiro rather doubted this. He seemed to remember Lance being off yesterday, too, but all of them, including Lance, had put it down to the difficult mission on Anabax. Still, he softened and offered Coran a smile. "Thank you. I'm sure you'll do everything you can."

Coran nodded briskly. "Absolutely. Now, let's get down the hangar, eh?"

The headed off again, faster than before.

By the time they reached Blue's hangar, the ramp was already lowered and Keith was on his way down, looking annoyed. When he saw Shiro and Coran, he brightened up and gave a small wave, but didn't rush to meet them. Instead, he turned and looked behind him as if waiting for something. Shiro hustled up the ramp to stand by his side, breathing a little heavily from his quick trip through the halls.

"Where...?"

He didn't get farther than that. Keith shook his head and gestured up the ramp, where Lance had finally emerged. "He didn't want me to help him."

Shiro took in Lance's appearance, eyes raking up and down his figure. Lance had removed his outer armor above his waist, including his helmet. That was why Keith had communicated with the castle and not him, it seemed. Shiro frowned. Lance must be feeling very restricted if he felt the need to remove his helmet as well as his breastplate.

He definitely looked like he was laboring hard. His face was too pale and covered with sweat, his mouth open to suck in air, and he was moving sluggishly, as if he was wading through mud. For a moment, the image was overlaid with another that was impressed on Shiro's memory: Back at the jungle planet, the moment when he had realized that Lance wasn't at his side and turned to find him leaning against a tree farther down the path, struggling to catch his breath.

The exact same thing was happening now. Lance looked away when he saw Shiro's face, then looked back, his face full of weariness and embarrassment. Shiro pressed his lips together. He understood Lance's need to stand on his own two feet and do as much as he was able, but they weren't in a survival situation, not this time. Lance could afford to accept some help, and they could afford to give him everything they had.

Coran made a noise of distress when he saw how bad off Lance looked. He gave Shiro a worried look as he turned away. "Bring him to the infirmary as soon as you can. I'm going to go ahead and prepare."

Shiro nodded, then turned back to watch Lance make his way down the ramp, still at a snail's pace. Finally, he reached him and Keith and gave Shiro a tremulous smile. "Hey, boss."

"Hey, kiddo." Shiro reached out and ruffled his hair. "Good job on your solo mission. Let's get you to Coran in the infirmary so he can examine you and figure out how to help."

Lance nodded, then slowly started to continue walking down the ramp past Shiro and Keith. Keith gave Shiro a glance of helpless irritation, and Shiro shook his head. Yeah, no. Shiro wasn't going to take no for an answer.

Shiro followed Lance, waiting till they made it to the bottom of the ramp. Lance paused for a moment and eyed the doorway, swaying dizzily. He looked dismayed at the realization that he had much, much farther to walk to get to the infirmary. Just getting down the ramp had been more taxing than he'd expected.

Shiro put a hand on his shoulder, and Lance turned to look at him. Shiro leaned in with his ear close to Lance's mouth and listened to his breath for a moment. Yep. Sounded just like last time, crowded and rushed and nowhere near deep enough. He straightened and gave Lance a grim smile. "If we were at a hospital on Earth, someone would be bringing you a wheelchair right now."

Lance rolled his eyes. "I can walk."

"Yeah, but you don't have to." Without further warning, Shiro bent over and picked Lance up with one arm around his back and the other under his knees. Lance yelped and stiffened in surprise, hands grabbing Shiro's shoulders for balance.

He was panting harder now, and he looked into Shiro's face with wide eyes, almost panicked. "Put me down, c'mon. I can walk. I'm not that sick."

"Um, no." Shiro adjusted Lance in his grip and headed for the door. Keith huffed in amusement and paced along at his side, and Shiro saw his relieved smile. Keith was still a little cautious with Lance, unwilling to push back against anything he wanted, no matter how bad for him. But Shiro was the bossman, so he could do what he wanted.

"Shiro, stop," Lance said earnestly. Shiro was distantly grateful that at least he still had enough breath to talk. Not that he intended to listen. He kept his eyes ahead, walking briskly down the hallway. "I'm not an invalid. You don't need to treat me like I'm weak."

Shiro almost snorted, but held himself back. Ah, right. Lance was still afraid of not being good enough, despite all assurances to the contrary. Every time they thought they'd beaten back all of the kid's doubts, another one seemed to spring up out of nowhere.

"It's not weakness, bud. It's sickness. It's beyond your control. There is no shame for you here. Well, there's shame in _not_ getting the help you need when it's available, maybe. That's just wasteful, don't you think?" Shiro offered a smirk, and Lance rolled his eyes.

Still, he relaxed slightly in Shiro's arms. He blew out a sigh that set off a brief burst of coughing, then shook it off. "Fine, let's get this over with."

Keith gave Shiro a grateful look, and Shiro nudged him with his elbow in camaraderie. They made it the rest of the way without incident. In the infirmary, Coran was bustling around something in the corner that looked suspiciously like an oxygen tent.

Lance made a disgusted noise and kicked at Shiro's arm, not enough to make him drop him, but enough to express his irritation. "Are you kidding me with this? All this technology, and it's like we're back on Earth. I know I can't go in a pod because they're all full, but I don't need to be quarantined."

Coran laughed through his mustache. He'd already abandoned the oxygen tent setup, striding across the room to meet them. Now he patted Lance's head fondly and gestured toward a worktable on the side of the room. "That's for later, just in case it's necessary. I know pneumonia isn't particularly communicable, so no, there won't be any quarantine, no worry on that. Let's just have a look at you first, all right?"

Lance grumbled, but he had no choice but to agree. Now that Lance was in capable hands, Keith excused himself to clean up and check in with the rest of the team. Blue had already delivered the scans to the command deck, so hopefully Trazo was happy now.

At the work table, Coran passed a scanning crystal over Lance's body a couple of times, concentrating on the chest, then tapped the crystal against a floating screen to transfer the information where it would be easier to see. In the meantime, Shiro helped Lance get out of the rest of his armor. Lance moved slowly, but finally swatted Shiro's hands away. "I got it, man. I got it from here. Leave me alone."

Shiro chuckled but willingly backed off with his hands in the air. Lance was down to the undersuit, sitting on the worktable with his shoulders slumped and chest heaving. His face was still flushed, and sweat beaded on his forehead, but he seeemed more perky now. "Okay," Shiro said. "I'll go get you some clothes to change into while Coran finishes looking you over. That okay, Coran?"

Coran barely glanced at him, engrossed in studying the scans, but he gave Shiro a thumbs up and an affirmative grunt. Shiro smiled and waved a hand as he went out the door. In Lance's room, he hesitated between a casual outfit and Lance's pajamas, but settled on the sleepwear. He brought along Lance's beloved slippers too, along with the sleepwear and robe. Lance was fond of his pajamas, and the Altean fabric felt like silk.

Back in the infirmary, Coran and Lance had moved to a bed on the far side of the room near the setup that looked like an oxygen tent but not inside it. Lance was lying down, his upper body propped up so he rested at a recline. Coran sat on a stool beside the bed, feeling his forehead. He looked up at Shiro's entrance, but Lance barely moved his eyes. He looked more tired than before.

Shiro held up the bundle of cloth in his hands and gave Lance a smile as he crossed the room to meet him. "Here, you should be more comfortable in this."

Lance groaned when he saw what Shiro was carrying. "Nooo, I don't want to sleep in the infirmary. I can't believe you're putting me to bed like a little kid."

Shiro shook his head. "I'm not saying you have to sleep in the infirmary." He looked at Coran. "Are you saying that he has to sleep in the infirmary?" Coran frowned, but didn't immediately answer, and Shiro looked back at Lance. "You can sleep anywhere you like, as long as it won't delay your recovery. But I _am_ saying you should spend the rest of the day resting. I know you like your pajamas."

Lance groaned again, but he sat up on the bed and reached out for the pajama set. Shiro handed them over, and Lance started struggling out of the undersuit. Shiro looked at Coran, trying to give the kid some privacy. "So what's the diagnosis, doc?"

Coran's mustache twitched in amusement at the moniker, but the situation was too serious to allow a smile. "He definitely has pneumonia. I've already given him the first dose of medicine, which I expect will make him quite drowsy." He pointed at the bedside table, which held a water pouch and an empty basin. "He will need to keep hydrated. I also expect the medicine to loosen the phlegm in his lungs, and he'll need to expel that regularly, thus the basin."

Shiro grimaced. Lance was in for a nasty time. "How long do you think it will last?"

Coran's face was grave. "Hopefully not long. A few quintents. We'll see how it goes. I'm still hopeful that we caught it before progressed far enough to become severe."

"I'm done." Lance's voice was quiet, accompanied by rustling sheets. Shiro and Coran turned and saw that he had tucked himself back into the bed, covers pulled messily up to his waist. He looked limp and exhausted, but at least he wasn't panting anymore. He seemed to have resigned himself to staying in the infirmary, even though Shiro had said he didn't have to.

Shiro couldn't help himself. He moved over to the bed and sat on the stool so he could fuss with Lance's blankets, pulling them up and smoothing them out over his chest. He passed his hand along the top edge to pat it down, then looked into Lance's face. "Is there anything you need?"

Lance's face twitched with discomfort, and his eyes flicked away. "I'm fine. You should get back to the important stuff. I'll just rest."

"Lance." Shiro pressed his hand down on his shoulder, and Lance looked back to his face. "You're important, too. If you need something, I want you to tell me. It doesn't matter how silly you think it is. I can see how much you're dreading this, and if there is _anything_ we can do to make it easier for you, we all will want to do that."

Lance grimaced, but he could not deny him, not after all the talking they'd done about being honest. "I just... I'm not looking forward to being alone in here while the rest of you are taking care of business." Shiro opened his mouth to reply, and he quickly went on. "But that doesn't mean someone has to stay with me! The mission is important, and you should all be there to liberate Belikor. I don't want to interfere with that, not at all. Me being a little lonely for a while is no big deal, not while you have a whole planet to save."

"Oh, Lance." Shiro raised his hand and pressed his palm against Lance's cheek. Lance leaned into it with a sigh, eyes fluttering shut. "You being lonely _is_ a big deal, I promise you. Yes, we have a planet to save, but there's always going to be a planet to save. There are always going to be important missions. That's just the way it is for us right now. But in some ways, our most important mission is taking care of each other. It's not every day we get the opportunity to do something special for our teammates, so when that opportunity comes, we should take it. It's like that saying back on Earth, 'Charity begins at home.' Being good to strangers doesn't mean much if you're not good to your own family first."

Lance nodded, wide-eyed and silent as he took this in. Shiro let go of his face and took his hand instead. Lance's fingers squeezed back, warm and close.

Shiro looked to Coran. "I'll stay with Lance for a while and keep him company. You go back to the command deck. Tell the others what's going on. I'll sure they'll all be eager to volunteer to stay with Lance. We'll take turns and set it up in shifts so he's never alone, unless there's a battle situation and we're all needed at our posts."

Coran nodded, eyes twinkling and face soft. "Excellent plan, Number One. I'll inform the troops. If you need anything from me, anything at all, feel free to comm me." He reached over and patted Lance's head. "Same goes for you, my boy. That should go without saying."

Lance mustered up a smile for him, though his eyelids were drooping and he seemed a breath away from dropping off. "Thanks, C'ran," he said fuzzily.

"You're welcome, of course."

Coran took his leave. Shiro stayed at Lance's bed, holding his hand and watching his face as he drifted off to sleep. The next few days were going to be nasty and painful for Lance, that was an unfortunate fact, but Shiro was going to do everything in his power to make it better. This particular task was not difficult at all. Rather, he liked it.


	8. Chapter 8

"How is he?" Hunk kept his voice soft as he moved up behind Shiro. Though he spoke to Shiro, his gaze was trained on Lance. Lance, sleeping in what amounted to a hospital bed, his breath raspy, head tilted to the side, face shiny with sweat. He looked uncomfortable, like sleep was a battlefield instead of a respite.

Shiro had been sitting statue-still at Lance's bedside, staring at his face with silent absorption. Now he came alive at Hunk's voice, hand flexing around Lance's held in his own, and he slowly tilted his head up to look at Hunk. He gave him a smile in greeting, worn and gentle, his eyes tired. He had dressed down, pulling off most of his armor pieces so he was just wearing the black underarmor above the waist. Maybe it had been too bulky for maneuvering when Lance needed help with something.

"He's been sleeping. Woke up a couple of times." Shiro gestured at the basin on the table, which was freshly rinsed out, water drops clinging to the rim. Hunk grimaced, understanding what that meant. So gross. He'd hoped he wouldn't have to deal with that, but if he was going to help take care of Lance through a bout of pneumonia, the chances of avoiding it were slim.

"I'm here to relieve you," Hunk said, voice unintentionally grim.

Shiro chuckled softly and let go of Lance's hand, resting it on his stomach, then raised his arms above his head to stretch out. He looked at Hunk, eyes teasing. "It's not so bad. So far the sputum's a cloudy yellow color and doesn't even smell too awful. Could be a lot worse, believe me."

Hunk shuddered. Right, Shiro had dealt with this before. "It was...worse?"

Shiro nodded solemnly. "A lot worse. Pus green, smelled like death... Just remember that it's even more horrible for Lance than it is for us. He has to taste it coming up. We just have to get rid of it."

Hunk's stomach rolled, and he folded his arms over his belly to hold it in. Shiro made a noise of commiseration and rose from his chair. He put an arm around Hunk's shoulders, then stood with him looking down at Lance sleeping less-than-peacefully in the bed.

"You can do this," Shiro said. "It's gonna be okay. You're a great guy and an even better friend. It's rough, and it's gross, and all of us would rather that it not be happening at all. But we don't get that choice. Family is about dealing with things together, even the stuff that is disgusting and annoying and not fun at all."

Hunk sighed, then turned sideways to face Shiro, slipping out from his under his arm as he moved. He had yet to let go of his stomach. "Do you feel guilty about this morning?"

Shiro knew what he was talking about immediately, of course. He hesitated, then shook his head, though his eyes fell away. "I'm trying not to."

Hunk frowned and squeezed himself in a queasy hug. "I can't help it. I don't think Lance would want me to, though."

Shiro looked back to his face and managed a smile. "No, he wouldn't. You can ask him next time he wakes up."

"It just...it feels really cruel, now, dragging him out of bed like that when he was coming down with this again."

"We didn't know. Lance didn't know, either, or he was hiding the truth from himself because he was afraid of it. If we'd known, we would have been more gentle and understanding, certainly. But we did the best we could with the knowledge we had at the time. That's all anyone can do."

"I just..." Hunk scrubbed his hands through his hair, dislodging his headband. "I was so _angry_ at him. For being lazy. And...not helpful. He knew this was a big day, an important day for Pidge, for the rest of us. And I felt like he wasn't pulling his weight. So I was annoyed, and upset, and..." He gestured at Lance, feeling helpless. "Maybe I missed the signs because I didn't want to see them. Because..."

Shiro's face was soft with understanding. "Because being annoyed feels good, sometimes. I get it. It makes you feel righteous, gives you energy. You're not a bad person for enjoying being annoyed at Lance, kiddo. He yelled at you and called you a mean name. And yes, he felt bad and apologized, but there's nothing wrong with you for being upset about it."

"Ughhhh, how are you so _good?"_ Hunk half-wailed, burying his face in his hands.

Shiro laughed and rubbed his shoulder. "I've felt the same way, buddy."

"I don't believe you," Hunk mumbled into his palms. "You're such an amazing guy, there's no way you've ever _enjoyed_ being annoyed at someone." Shiro huffed and drew in a breath like he was going to protest. Hunk shook his head and rubbed his face, then lowered his hands and looked at him. "No, it's fine, I get it. You're a normal guy, you're not a superhero, yada yada. The rest of us put you on a pedestal sometimes, but that's our fault, not yours."

He sighed and looked sideways at Lance, who showed no signs of waking up. He could be faking, though. Lance was good at faking sleep when people were talking about him and he wanted to listen. Came from being in a big family.

He scrubbed under his eye and looked back to Shiro. "So... Yeah. I guess I don't feel guilty about dumping Lance on the floor this morning. He kind of deserved it because of the way he was acting. If he'd told me he wasn't feeling good, or just hadn't yelled at me, things would have gone differently. But I do feel guilty for sort of enjoying it and for enjoying bringing you in and you making him feel bad with your almighty dad stare. Does that make sense?"

Shiro made an "aw" noise and hauled him in for a hug. Hunk went, hunching down and burying his face in Shiro's shoulder. Shiro rubbed his back and stroked his fingers over the back of his head. "It totally makes sense, big guy. And yeah, it wasn't exactly noble of you, but it's completely understandable. You can apologize if you still want to, and I'm sure Lance will forgive you."

Hunk nodded, rubbing his tears off on Shiro's shoulder, then pulled back and gave him a smile. "Thanks, man. You're the best."

Shiro beamed. "I'll take it. But I don't have a dad stare."

Huff guffawed. "You totally do, dude, don't even pretend."

Shiro waved a hand, then bent down to scoop up the armor he'd discarded. "I'm too young to be a dad."

"Yeah, but you're never too young to have a dad stare." Hunk helped him gather up the armor and piled it into his arms. "Anyway, have fun on the command deck. Pidge has been talking about hacking the Galra again, so it's getting all kinds of exciting."

Shiro's eyes brightened at that, but then he glanced at Lance with a frown. "Shouldn't you be there, then, if the talk is about technology?"

Hunk shrugged as he moved over to Shiro's chair and plopped into it. It was plush and comfy, a little dusty on the arms and the back. Shiro had probably hauled it in from one of the nice lounges when it became clear that Lance's stay in the infirmary was not going to be a short one. "Maybe. But I'd rather be here. I called dibs on the first shift after yours, and I was totally the fastest. They can do without me for a few vargas."

Shiro finished putting on his armor and moved over to ruffle his hair. Then he paused and carefully rearranged the headband that had been dislodged on Hunk's head. Hunk grinned up at him. He'd stripped off his armor gloves for better tactility and was now taking Lance's hand in his. It felt warm and clammy and a little unpleasant, but Hunk would put up with a lot for Lance's sake. Including gross yellow sputum.

"You're a good guy, Hunk," Shiro said fondly, patting the headband in place. "We're lucky to have you. And so is Lance."

"I know, dude." Hunk waved him out. "See you later."

Once Shiro was gone, Hunk looked back to the bed and Lance's still face. "You awake there, sleepy ninja?"

Lance moved his head sluggishly to the side, then cracked one eye open to look at him. His fingers flexed in Hunk's grip, not really holding, just letting him know that he was, in fact, awake. "How'd you know?" His voice sounded slurred and sluggish, too, but Hunk still grinned harder.

"You told me once, remember? How you'd fall asleep in the living room during family gatherings after wearing yourself out playing with your cousins. And about how you almost always woke up when someone said your name, but you pretended not to so you could hear what they were saying about you."

Lance yawned, sticking out his tongue, and wiggled his fingers into a more comfortable position on Hunk's palm. "Too many talkative tías," he mumbled, eyelids drooping.

Hunk squeezed his hand. "Yeah, you didn't usually hear anything good when you did that, did you?"

"I'm unfocused. And lazy. And annoying."

Hunk's heart clenched. "Also friendly. And enthusiastic. And kind. And talented. And amazing. And..."

"Stooooop." Lance groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, turning away from the light like he had a headache. Hunk frowned and went still, just holding his hand. Lance flopped around on the pillow until he found a more comfortable spot, then opened his eyes and looked at him again. He looked exhausted, dark bruises under his eyes and face pale, and his breath was loud. But at least he was talking and seemed lucid. "I know you like me, Hunk. You don't have to wax poetic about it. My aunties didn't mean any harm, either, they were just worried about my future. I'm not messed up about it, not anymore. All that talk pretty much stopped when I got into Galaxy Garrison, anyway. And I forgive you for enjoying being annoyed at me. Don't worry about it anymore."

Hunk wrinkled his nose in distaste, but he knew when to drop a subject. He rubbed his thumb over the back of Lance's hand. "How are you feeling?"

Lance sighed, eyes rolling up toward the ceiling. "Not exactly great."

"Is the light too bright? You want me to turn it down?"

Lance raised his eyebrows in surprise that Hunk knew, which was answer enough. Hunk chuckled and gently disengaged their hands, then went over to the worktable to snag a tablet reader. He brought it back to the bed and dropped down into the chair again, already tapping away at the tablet. "Give me, like, a minute."

"Don't you mean a few ticks?"

Hunk swatted a hand in the air, chuckling. After a few ticks, the lights in the infirmary started to dim. Hunk brought them down to a level that resembled deep twilight, then gave Lance a smug smile.

Lance rolled his eyes. "Show off. You know there's a light control, like, right there on the wall."

"Yeah, but this is more fun. I've been wanting to try it since Pidge showed me how. Plus, I can do this." Hunk hit another control on the tablet, making the vents kick in. Lance sighed as a simulated breeze touched his face, brushing back his sweaty hair. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"Pretty cool," Lance echoed. His eyes drooped, and he rocked his shoulders back and forth, snuggling down into his bed even as he lifted his chin to catch the breeze. Then he held out his hand and wiggled his fingers for Hunk to take again.

Hunk complied, setting the tablet down on the arm of the chair and folding Lance's hand into his. Lance sighed, and his eyes fell almost completely shut. Hunk smiled.

"Know what, Hunk?" Lance mumbled.

"What, buddy?"

"This sucks. Like, a lot. I hate being sick again. I hate not being able to catch my breath. I hate that I can't help out with the mission right now. I really, really want to be there for Pidge, and I hate that I can't be." Hunk opened his mouth to reassure him, but Lance shook his head and went on. "But it's still way, way better than being stuck on a jungle planet with broken ribs and bruises all over and Galra after my butt. Like, it doesn't even compare. I'm so, so glad to be here right now, man, you have no idea."

Hunk's heart ached. "I'm glad you're here, too, buddy," he said softly. "So, so much."

Lance smiled. "Even when I'm annoying?"

"Especially when you're annoying. You wouldn't be Lance if you weren't annoying once in a while, and I like Lance. Lance is my brother, and I love him, and I couldn't do this without him."

Lance huffed out a breath, grinning ear to ear. "Okay, you can stop." His fingers squeezed around Hunk's, and his eyes fell fully shut.

Hunk watched him for a few moments to make sure he was really asleep, then settled back in his chair. He pulled the tablet into his lap and played with it one-handed, still holding Lance's hand with the other, one ear out to listen to his breathing. So far, no sputum. Hunk wasn't sure how long that was going to last, but he was grateful for small favors.


	9. Chapter 9

Lance was exhausted. He was getting very tired of feeling like he couldn't breathe. He was getting very tired of coughing up phlegm, or worse, coughing and coughing with nothing coming up at all. It wasn't fun. He didn't even get to enjoy the lazy day lying around in bed, because the whole time he was worrying about how things were going with the mission and wishing that he could help, when he wasn't too miserable to think at all. It lent an undercurrent of anxiety under an already horrible day.

At least he wasn't alone. Shiro taking care of him was, as expected, practically perfect. Shiro had experience, having gone through this with Lance before, and he also had great instincts. He seemed to know when Lance needed water or help sitting up so he could cough or a shift in position or a hand smoothing over his brow, and he provided each of those smoothly and efficiently, always with that look of patient concern on his face that made Lance feel safe and loved, and never like a burden.

Hunk was great, too. He was a little more grumbly about it and almost gagged the first time Lance coughed up phlegm, and just in general made more noise and anxious movements than Shiro had. He had a tendency to get caught up in his own distaste for what was happening rather than concentrating on Lance's comfort to the exclusion of all else the way Shiro had. But Lance couldn't blame him for that, and Hunk always brought his reactions under control pretty quickly. He had a knack for helping Lance finding the best way to position his body and kept the environment at the ideal levels of brightness and coolness and airflow. Hunk was a marvel, and when he bent his big engineering brain to a problem, even a problem like making a sick person feel just a little bit better, that problem got _solved._

Despite all the help and kindness and the powerful Altean medicine, which had definitely knocked Lance for a loop after he first took it, Lance could feel himself getting worse. His body felt more and more drained as the day wore on, and the day felt interminable. He was exhausted, but he couldn't sleep, at least not well. He kept waking up, drifting in and out of consciousness. Even sleep wasn't a true relief from the pain and the breathlessness and the heat of the fever boiling under his skin. It seemed like he could still feel it, always, all the time. It just got a little worse or a little better at times.

He couldn't really sleep, but he couldn't really stay awake, either. He was only truly aware of his surroundings for a few minutes at a time, and then he sank under the hot, murky swamp of fever sleep again. It was frustrating, how he'd be awake one moment, then close his eyes and open them to see that things had changed. He would be talking to Hunk, and then he blinked, and the next thing he knew Hunk would be sitting back in his chair, apparently ignoring him as he worked on his tablet. Then Lance would clear his throat, and Hunk would look up and give him a big smile and train all his attention on him again. It was stupid, but Lance sort of felt like he was being ignored everytime he fell asleep for a few moments, though he knew it wasn't true.

And through it all was the immense weight and heaviness in his body, like his lungs were slowly filling up with cement. Each breath seemed to take a little more effort than the last, and he felt like he was pinned down on the bed by the weight of his chest. He could feel his heart beating in his ears, heard every breath rumbling moistly in his throat. Panic constantly pushed at the edges of his consciousness, because he couldn't breathe, he couldn't...he could barely breathe, and it hurt so much.

Pretty much the only things keeping him together were Blue's voice in the back of his head, purring in comfort and letting him know that she wasn't worried, and knowing that someone was nearby if he needed help. Everything was okay. He was going to be fine. Blue wasn't scared, so Lance didn't need to be scared, either.

"Lance, buddy, you awake?" Hunk's voice, soft and gentle. "It's okay if you aren't."

They were still holding hands, though it was damp and uncomfortable, the sweat of Lance's fever continually slicking his hand no matter how often he wiped his palm on the blankets. Lance wiggled his fingers a little and forced his eyes open, barely able to see through the haze of his clouded vision.

Someone else was standing next to Hunk, and after a bit Lance was able to make out the fact that it was Pidge. No one else was quite that short, with hair quite that frazzled. He mustered a smile and squinted at her. "Hey, Pidgey-kins. How's the planning going?"

Pidge made a noise in her throat that sounded exactly like what an eye-roll looked like, but she took a step closer and leaned against Lance's bed on her hip. "Don't talk, idiot. You sound like your throat got put through a blender."

"Feels like it, too."

Hunk gently disengaged their hand-hold and sat back, and Lance pressed his sweaty palm down on the sheet. To his surprise, Pidge scooted closer and laid her hand over his. It was cool and pleasant, and Lance resisted the urge to close his eyes and sigh in relief. Very little felt cool and pleasant in his world right now.

"Shouldn't you be on the command deck?" he asked. "You got important stuff going on."

Pidge and Hunk exchanged a look, and Hunk cleared his throat and climbed out of the chair. "Yeah, bud, I'm gonna head up there now, okay? Pidge is going to take a shift. You'll be okay without me?"

Lance squinted at him, then had to swallow a couple of times before he could talk again. His throat felt like it had been scratched up with a wire brush and then clogged with thick, bad-tasting jello. "Never for long, big man. I'll miss you every second you're away, you know that."

Hunk chuckled and reached out to ruffle his sweaty hair. "I'll be back to check on you soon."

He left his tablet on the comfy chair and left, and Lance struggled to focus on Pidge again. "No, but, for real, you have more important places to be."

"Shut up, Lance." Pidge pressed his hand again. "I want to be here."

"But..."

She shook her head sharply, cutting him off. "No. Don't talk. I'll explain, okay? I'll tell you everything you want to know. I think I know you well enough that I can anticipate your questions, so there's no need to say them aloud. Just rest your throat. Got it?"

Lance squinted at her, straining to lift his head even a few inches off the reclining pillows at his back, then finally nodded and relaxed, leaning back into the bed. His eyes fluttered, but he forced them to keep from closing. He really wanted to hear what Pidge had to say.

Pidge shifted to reach toward the bedside table. "Water? I bet your throat is killing you now."

Lance nodded weakly. Pidge grabbed one of the five or six water pouches sitting on the table—Lance couldn't remember when they had accumulated there, Shiro and Hunk must have kept grabbing more when he was asleep—then held it out for him. Lance lifted his free hand to take the water pouch, but even he could see that it was trembling. He frowned, surprised and a little embarrassed. He didn't remember being quite this weak the last time he had pneumonia. But then, he'd been pretty out of it for a lot of that time.

Pidge shook her head at his embarrassment and helped him hold the pouch as he drank several long, slow swallows. Lance let his arm flop down on the bed beside him again, signaling that he was done, and she put the pouch back on the table, then returned to leaning against his bedside and looking into his face. The whole time, her other hand didn't budge from covering Lance's.

"So you want to know what's going on with the mission, right?"

Lance nodded, eyes sliding shut then opening again. He really, really did.

Pidge hopped up on the edge of the bed, pressing against his side as she wiggled down into the bedding and made a place for herself. Same way she'd done in his heart, really, wiggly little goblin forcing her way in and making herself at home. Not that Lance had ever tried to prevent her.

"We have a plan. It's partly why I wanted to take this shift with you, actually, even though I didn't claim it at first. Allura and I are gonna be away for awhile, so I won't get a chance to check in on you."

Lance's eyes widened. He didn't have to say anything, though. As promised, Pidge already knew what he would ask.

"Allura and I are gonna go undercover on the planet to get some intel. Trazo's coming along, too. He thinks there might be a resistance cell down there we can get into contact with, and even if we can't, it'll still be good to get more information on the ground. Since Voltron is out of commission with one lion down, we're going to have to try a little more subtle approach this time."

She shook her head, reading his expression. "And don't you dare apologize or feel bad for being sick, okay? We've been down a lion before and we've always been able to deal with it. It's not your fault. This time we even know before we go in that we're only going to have four lions available, so we'll be able to plan for it and figure out contingencies. A lot better than having an emergency situation with no time to figure out what to do. You did _not_ choose to get pneumonia again, so there is absolutely no blame for you." She leaned forward and poked the middle of his forehead with one finger. "Stop. Stop that right now. Tell Blue to remind you. It's not your fault."

Lance smiled weakly. Pidge was so smart. Blue purred in the back of his mind, happy to be included in the discussion. "She says she will."

Pidge's eyebrows bent. "You haven't been lonely, right? That's why we've been doing the whole shift thing, so you'll never have to deal with this alone. You always have Blue, plus one other person. Is that enough?"

Lance smiled so hard his dry lips felt like they were going to crack. "Jeez, Pidgey, I never realized you cared so much about my emotional well-being."

She scowled and poked his forehead again. "Answer the question, jerk. And keep the words to a minimum."

He huffed and waved a hand. "Yeah, it's enough. Seriously." He sighed as weakness coursed through his body again, shivering in his limbs and making his eyes droop. He let his head lean back on the pillow, eyes trailing toward the ceiling. It hurt to breathe, and talking took so much energy… Maybe Pidge had the right idea about using as few words as possible.

It was quiet for a few moments. Lance's mind wandered, and he felt himself starting to drop off to sleep again. Then Pidge shifted on the bed, rubbing against his hip, and Lance forced his eyes open to look at her again. "Y'need something?"

She frowned at the way his voice slurred, but shook her head. Her eyes were piercing behind her glasses. "I'm fine. I was just thinking...maybe a cloth and some water."

Lance blinked. "What?"

She gestured at his face, waving her fingers in a circle. "That's what they do in books and movies, right? They dip a cloth in water and wipe it on the face of someone who has a fever to help them cool down. You look...super uncomfortable. Even sweatier than me after a day doing drills." The corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk.

Lance laughed, appreciating the joke for what it was. "Yeah, I'm sweaty." He turned his head to wipe his forehead on his shoulder, but couldn't seem to gather up enough strength to make much of a difference. The effort left him panting, hot breath rushing in and out of his mouth as his face burned. "I think...think the fever's getting worse, now that I think about it..."

Pidge nodded and hopped off the bed, giving Lance's fingers a quick pat when he twitched uneasily at the loss of her presence. "I'll be right back."

She hurried over to the other side of the infirmary. Lance tried to follow her with his eyes, but he was losing track of things again. Pidge had gone to get something, he knew that much, but he couldn't remember what, specifically, she was after, and he just wanted her to come back. Pressure built up in his chest, and he started feeling dizzy from lack of air. It just...it really hurt, and it wouldn't stop...

Before he quite knew what was happening, Lance found himself lurching upward to a sitting position, only to bend over himself with his fingers clutching at the blankets as he coughed and coughed and coughed. It hurt. And not just in the normal way that coughing always hurt. This didn't just burn in his throat and strain the soft tissues of his mouth and nose. He felt it deep in his chest, a terrible, wracking pain that dug sharp claws under his ribs and _pulled._ It went on and on, and his fingers dug into the bedclothes, knuckles white and trembling as his body heaved.

He wanted it to stop. He wanted so much for it to stop that he was frantic with the want. The coughing felt like a creature inside his chest, rooting and burrowing and tearing at his insides, and he wished that it was. He wished it was something physical that he could expel, something Coran could cut out of him. He sobbed, face wet with tears, and wished that he was anywhere but here.

As all things do, it eventually came to an end. Lance came back to himself to find that he was slumping over his own lap, vision blurred and shaking as a small hand patted his shoulder and rubbed his back, a worried young voice murmuring in his ear. It was Pidge, pressed close against him, and she was trembling, too. So was her voice. "Lance, it's okay, it's okay, it's over, it's almost over, c'mon, you can do it."

Her other hand was holding a basin under his face. Lance blinked down at it, head reeling. He felt breathless and faint, drained and empty, barely able to hold himself upright. Somewhere in the middle of the fit, he'd coughed something up and spat it out. The basin was spattered, a disgusting splooge of yellow-green hanging over one edge. Pidge had done a valiant job, but she hadn't managed to catch the whole thing. It smelled awful, like garbage and sewage and something deeply, terribly rotten, and Lance gagged and swayed back, only wanting to escape the sight, the smell, everything about it.

"Lance!" Pidge let go of the basin, both hands flying to his shoulders. She couldn't hold him up, not the way Hunk or Shiro could have, but she was shockingly strong for her size. Her hands fisted in his pajama shirt, and she managed to guide Lance back to lie against the bed again. There, he went limp, staring up at the ceiling with eyes that barely saw, his breath rasping in his throat.

"Lance. Lance, are you okay?" Pidge's hands fluttered over his face, questing like a nervous bird. "Should I get Hunk? Shiro? Coran?"

He was worrying her. He was worrying Pidge. That was the last thing Lance wanted. Pidge had plenty of other things to worry about. She should be concentrating on getting her family back, not wasting her energy taking care of Lance.

Lance blinked and rolled his head over to look at her, and his lips parted to tell her this, but he didn't have the breath to form words. His lips moved, and nothing more than a grunt came out, pained and whisper-soft. It seemed to reassure Pidge. Her hands went still, one resting on his cheek, the other one across his forehead. They were soft and cool and very nice, and Lance's eyes fluttered shut.

"I'm gonna get Coran," Pidge said, no longer sounding uncertain and scared. Just grim and concerned.

Lance tried to say something like, "Don't go," but he didn't know if he managed to convey any sense with his shaky breath and roughened throat.

Pidge understood somehow. Such a smart little bird. She scoffed, and her palm tightened against his forehead even as her other hand disappeared from his cheek. "Of course I'm not going anywhere. Hunk's tablet is right here. I'll call Coran with that, okay? He'll be here soon."

Lance's head moved in an indication of a nod, and then he went limp and concentrated on trying to breathe. He would really like to see Coran right now, though he had no idea what he could do to make it better. In this moment, dizzy with pain and lack of oxygen and struggling to hold onto consciousness, Lance couldn't imagine anything that could possibly make him feel better. The world was made up of suffering, that was all, and he had to endure it. There was nothing else he could do.

It might have been his imagination, but Blue's purring in the back of his mind seemed like it was starting to sound worried.


	10. Chapter 10

Coran bustled into the infirmary to find Lance and Pidge tangled up on the bed in something like a loose, messy hug, she trying to support him as he leaned limply over her shoulder, wheezing for breath with his eyes closed. His fingers were tangled in the back of her shirt, and she was patting his upper back with one hand and murmuring into his ear. Her eyes flicked over to acknowledge Coran's entrance, but she didn't otherwise move, completely occupied with trying to hold Lance up. It would have been an amusing sight in other circumstances, seeing the taller Lance draped over small Pidge like that, but Coran found it more alarming than humorous.

He hustled over to them, mustache twitching, and reached out a hand to feel Lance's forehead. "I came as quickly as I could. What's going on?" Lance's eyes fluttered at the touch of Coran's hand against his hot skin, but his eyes couldn't seem to focus, and he didn't even try to speak.

Pidge shifted her head a little more to look at him, still rubbing Lance's upper back in small circles. "He had a really bad coughing fit, and now he seems kind of out of it, like he can't keep track of things or hear what I'm saying. I think he's not getting enough oxygen."

Coran could see from the color of Lance's lips alone that that was likely true, not to mention the glassiness of his eyes and the weakness of his grip on Pidge's shirt. He tapped the panel at the head of the bed to activate a holographic window to view Lance's vitals. Pidge blinked in surprise when the window appeared in the air, and Coran inwardly cursed, realizing that he'd forgotten to show the others how to see this. It would have been useful. He'd been too distracted, taken this too lightly. He wouldn't make that mistake again.

He hissed out a breath when the saw the numbers for Lance's blood oxygen level. He ran his fingers through Lance's hair to alert him of his presence and sat down next to the tangle of the limbs that was Lance and Pidge as he reached over to try to take Lance's weight off Pidge's small frame. "Come, my boy, we're going to move now, all right? Just for a bit. We'll get you feeling better in no time."

Lance didn't seem to hear him. He stared blankly away and clung to Pidge with all the strength left in his weakened body, resisting Coran's attempts to shift him sideways to lean on him instead. Only after some murmured reassurances from both Pidge and Coran did he allow himself to be moved, slowly and relucantly. Then he slumped bonelessly into Coran's side, eyes falling shut as his fingers loosened from Pidge's shirt. His breath was far too fast and uneven. When Coran pressed his hand over the boy's chest to brace him, he could feel his heartbeat, too, quick as a glitterfly.

Pidge shifted away from Lance as slowly and reluctantly as he had, moving to sit beside him opposite Coran, her hands still wrapped around his arm. "Are you gonna put him in that oxygen tent thing?" she asked, nodding toward the corner of the room where Coran had set up the mini saturation chamber.

"Is that what you call it on Earth? A small area where you can change the concentration of gases to treat someone having difficulty with respiration?"

Pidge nodded.

Coran smiled in an attempt to reassure her, too. "Yes, that's exactly it." He started to shift off the bed, maneuvering Lance to the edge, but Pidge held on to Lance's arm.

Coran peered around Lance's limp form to frown at her. "What's wrong?"

She licked her lips and grimaced. "You're not gonna put Lance in there alone, are you? I don't think isolation is good for him right now. I really, really don't. He almost panicked when I left his bed for a few minutes to look for something. That was what set off the coughing fit that left him like this."

Coran sighed. "I know it's far from a perfect solution, but it was the best I could set up on short notice. I hoped we wouldn't need it at all, but thought it better to be safe, just in case, and well... Let's just move him there for now and see if the extra oxygen helps, all right? If it does, I'll work on finding a better way to help him, perhaps something portable. I don't want to leave him alone, either, Number Five, I promise. I think you are small enough to sit with him in the 'oxygen tent' while I look for a more permanent solution."

Pidge nodded in acceptance, and Coran turned his attention back to Lance. He supported his head with one hand wrapped around the back of his neck and bent down to look into his face. "Can you hear me, Lance? We need to get you over to the...hrmm...we'll just call it the oxygen tent. Do you think you can stand and walk?"

Lance breathed deliberately, in and out, through his mouth hanging open, then shifted his glassy eyes to look back into Coran's face. "Nnn...n-no."

Coran winced at the sound of his voice, breathless and pained. He wasn't sure if Lance was responding to the question or simply objecting to the entire situation in general. He seemed barely aware of his surroundings. "All right, that's okay, my boy. You don't have to do a thing. Just relax and concentrate on keeping that air coming in and out, that's it, good job."

Coran set his feet on the floor, supporting most of Lance's weight as the boy leaned against him, then turned back and scooped him up with one arm around his shoulders and the other under his knees. Lance didn't object to the movement, but instead instinctively wrapped his arms around Coran's neck. His head was heavy against the side of Coran's neck, hot breaths puffing out erratically against his chest.

Pidge scrambled to get out of the way at the last minute, moving just in time to avoid being brained by Lance's feet as Coran swung them off the bed. She grabbed Lance's pillow and a handful of water pouches, then followed Coran as he carried the boy over to the corner. Pidge darted ahead and pulled open the hanging door so Coran could duck in, then lay Lance down on the fresh cot inside. He turned back to seal the opening while Pidge sidled around to the other side of the bed.

There was very little room, but as Coran had predicted, Pidge was able to force her way into one of the small open spots. She ended up half sitting on the bed, one leg hanging off it, her hand on Lance's shoulder. He lay limply against the cool sheets, staring into nowhere and shivering in the cool air. Coran turned to work on the equipment inside the tent to start the extra oxygen flowing while Pidge rubbed up and down Lance's arm. A small hiss sounded as the oxygen began to flow, and Coran opened a monitoring window to watch the levels rise.

"Lance, can you hear me?" Pidge asked. "You doing okay in there?"

Lance blinked in confusion, then sluggishly rolled his head over to look at Pidge. Already, he seemed more lucid and aware. His breath rasped in his throat. "Pidge..."

"I'm here, buddy. Me n' Coran are looking out for you."

Lance's eyes closed briefly, then opened again. His voice took on an urgent note. "Pidgey, I can't… I can't breathe." Indeed, his breath was hitching in his chest now. Every intake of air seemed hard fought, and Coran could see that he was barely holding off a panic.

"Yes, you can, Lance." She squeezed his arm. Her eyes glistened with sympathetic tears behind her glasses. "Can't you feel it? There's more oxygen now. It's starting to make me feel a little giddy, actually. I'm sure it's doing you good, too."

Lance's eyes closed, and tears trickled down his cheeks. "No, no, I can't, it... It really hurts, Pidgey, I can't..."

"You can breathe, Lance. Come on. It's okay. I know you're sick, and it hurts, and you're scared, but it's gonna be okay. Follow me. Please." Pidge sucked in a big, exaggerated breath, then blew it out through pursed lips. "Just like that, see? Can you try to copy that?"

Lance shook his head, eyes still closed. His breath was coming faster now, still raspy and painful. "It hurts. It hurts. I need..."

Coran's heart ached, both at Lance's near panic and Pidge's pain at being unable to fix this for him. He reached out and laid his hand on Lance's other arm, pressing gently. "Is there something else we can do for you, dear boy? Something else you need to help you calm yourself and breathe?"

Now that the oxygen was improving Lance's cognitive abilities, he seemed to have more energy to feel the fear that must have been weighing on him this entire time. It was a wonder that he hadn't already suffered a panic attack ten times over. Coran wasn't sure how he'd managed to hold it off till now, but it wasn't much of a surprise that he was finally getting too overwhelmed.

Lance gulped, then opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Coran. His eyes were bloodshot and full of tears, his chest heaving as he fought for control. "I need...I want... Shiro. I want Shiro. Or Keith? Can Keith come? I need him...to tell me it's okay."

He closed his eyes, struggling for breath, and Coran looked at Pidge in sympathy. It must hurt her to hear Lance asking for someone else while she was sitting right next to him. But Pidge just looked back at Coran, her eyes hard and lips pressed together. "I'll stay with him while you go get Keith. For some reason he's been the best at keeping Lance calm during his panic attacks, at least since Sylose. They really had a bonding moment there, between royal duels and Lance getting dumped in a lake with his hands tied."

Coran snorted his amusement. "I suppose that's true." Still, he was relucant to tear himself away. He leaned over Lance's bed and laid his hand on the side of his head, feeling the waves of heat pouring off him. "Lance, dear lad, can you hold on? I'll be back as quickly as possible."

Lance's chest heaved as he panted, but his eyes were more lucid as he looked back into Coran's face. "Yeah," he murmured, barely audible, his voice rough and unsteady. "Sorry I'm...so much trouble."

Coran shook his head and stroked his fingers through Lance's hair. "Not a bit of it, my boy. It's no trouble at all. I'll be right back."

Lance's eyes fluttered, and he managed a nod, weak and shaky. Coran gave his head one last pat, lingering for a tick or two, then hurried off as quick as his feet could take him. As he left the infirmary, he could hear Pidge's voice behind him, murmuring gently.

He found the crew still on the bridge, all but Hunk, who Coran knew had gone down to the engineering deck to put together a toolkit for Pidge to take with her to Belikor. He would go find him directly after this and get his help in creating a portable oxygen machine for Lance. First, though, Lance needed immediate relief.

Trazo looked up when Coran entered the bridge, both pairs of arms crossed across his body. "Good, you're back. Is the girl ready to get going, already?"

Coran's lips pressed together, his mustache twitching in distaste. "The Green Paladin is still needed at her current post," he said, putting emphasis on Pidge's title. He didn't like Trazo's attitude. Hadn't liked it since he came on board, truly, but in the last few vargas as they inched closer and closer to returning to Trazo's homeworld, his sharp remarks and impatience only seemed to be getting worse. It was like he expected them to go back on their word at any moment.

And, well, considering that the poor fellow had been a prisoner of the Galra for who knew how long, Coran couldn't really blame him for a certain amount of distrust and guarded self-interest. Still, it grated to hear him referring to Pidge, who was the one most directly affected by his unwillingness to trust them, as if she was no more than a stepping stone on his way to getting what he wanted. She was risking her life for Trazo and his planet, and he didn't seem to care.

Coran shook his head and turned to Keith, who was half-sitting, half-leaning on the back of one of the paladin chairs with his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes hooded and dark. "Speaking of Pidge's current post, Keith, there is a request for you to relieve her."

Keith straightened, arms falling down to his sides as his eyes met Coran's in concern. "Pidge is asking for me? Why? I thought she was supposed to be there for a couple of hours. She insisted on it, actually."

Coran grimaced. "Well, more precisely, Lance is asking for you, and Pidge told me to come without delay. I'm afraid Lance had a bit of a...setback. And Pidge said you were the best one to deal with it."

Keith's eyebrows bent in confusion, but he nodded and pushed himself off the pilot chair, moving to join Coran at the door. Trazo looked between them, frowning mightily. "Wait, what are you talking about? I thought the blue one was a little sick, that's all. What are you hiding from us?"

Coran squinted at him. He hadn't wanted to say aloud that Lance was "freaking out" as the paladins would put it and needed emotional support, not in front of this outsider. Trazo did not need to be privy to the inner workings of their team. Coran wasn't the diplomat Allura was, though, so he wasn't sure what to say to Trazo without giving it away or further deepening his suspicions.

Before he could formulate the words, Shiro strode over to meet them. He looked straight at Coran, ignoring Trazo, and his voice was sharp and agitated. "Did Lance have a panic attack?"

Coran cast a significant look at Trazo, but Shiro didn't pick it up. He was fully focused on Coran, worried only about Lance and his well-being. Everything else had faded from Shiro's perception. Coran sighed. "Not quite. But he's barely holding it off. Pidge said that Keith would be the best to help him."

"I should come," Shiro said at once, moving forward. He started to push his way past Coran and Keith to the door.

Coran winced sympathetically, but reached out to put a hand on his chest, halting him. Shiro looked down at the hand in confusion, then back to Coran's face. "Sorry, lad," Coran said. "There's not room for more than one or two smallish members of the team in the...oxygen tent, as Pidge called it. I had to move Lance there to help with his breathing. Keith will be able to sit with him, and meanwhile I'm going to find Hunk and get his help in working up a portable solution. Pidge will join us once Keith relieves her, I'm sure."

Trazo blinked, then stepped forward. His voice rose. "Wait. Just a tick. Are all of you forgetting the mission here? You're all going to drop what you've been doing, preparing to save an entire planet, my planet, for...for _this?"_ The last word was spoken as if he was referencing something slimy and stinking pulled up from the depths of the Anabaxi swamp.

The room went suddenly, deathly still. No one moved. No one even seemed to breathe. Keith and Shiro were frozen, staring at Coran with faces suddenly frosted over with rage. Their fists were clenched. They were only barely holding themselves back from turning on Trazo and tearing him to pieces.

Across the room, Coran caught a glimpse of Allura's face. She had grown, her body instinctively transforming in the face of a threat. She'd reached behind herself and grabbed onto the edge of a console to restrain herself. The metal was bending under her fingertips.

Coran understood. Perfectly. His mind was full of the image of Lance, lying in that bed in the infirmary when Shiro had first told him that he needed to rest. The boy had been so meek and resigned, quietly surrendering to what he knew was going to be a terrible, terrifying, agonizing illness without a word of a complaint. He hadn't asked why Coran couldn't put him in a cryo-replenisher to ride this out. He hadn't even asked anyone to stay with him, not without being prompted, though he desperately wanted and needed the company. He was a good, kind, brave boy who had laid his life on the line for the sake of the universe, and Trazo by extension, countless times.

And what had he gotten in return? He'd been taken away from his home with little to no hope of returning. He'd been wounded repeatedly and sickened nearly to the point of death. His mind had been damaged so deeply that at one point he had begged them all to get rid of him and find someone else to take his place. He still suffered from PTSD and a phobia gained during those tumultous battles. And yet, he kept fighting. He kept giving himself, again and again. He only wanted to help. He wanted to be needed. He wanted to be loved.

Yes, Coran wanted to kill Trazo, too. How dare he say such a thing. How dare he even think it.

None of them could move. Finally, Shiro shivered, a full body shudder that passed through him from head to feet. He blinked several times, then turned and faced Trazo. His Galra arm was glowing again. He hadn't noticed.

His voice was perfectly controlled, perfectly contained. A shell of ice over a raging volcano. "We understand that you are concerned for your planet. You want to save your home and your people, your family. We understand your sense of urgency and need. But you must understand that we feel the same things, exactly the same, right now, this instant. For Lance. He is our family. He is hurt and sick, and he needs our help. We will not let him suffer, not when we can do anything to prevent it. We will help your planet, yes, we have promised to do so, and we keep our promises. But we have to take care of our own, too."

Trazo opened his mouth as if to respond. Shiro shook his head sharply, once. "Don't say anything. It would be in your best interest if you said nothing else. You come from a people of traders and merchants, so you must be skilled at reading the body language of those you meet. Look around the room. Do you really think that it would be a good idea to open your mouth at this time?"

Trazo shut his mouth and looked around, taking in the expression on each of their faces. He paled and stumbled back one step, then two. He looked to Shiro, ashen and shaken.

Shiro nodded, then turned to Coran. "I will come with you and Keith to the infirmary, even if I can't fit inside the oxygen tent with Lance. I don't think it would be a good idea fo me to stay here right now."

Coran nodded and reached out to grip his shoulder, hard and strong. "You're a wise man, Shiro. Yes. We'll all go." He looked to Allura. "Will you be all right here alone with...him?" He tipped his head toward Trazo, not bothering to look at him.

Allura's nostrils flared, but she nodded. "I will manage." Her voice was hard and clipped. Trazo sidled away, even though a wide space already separated them.

"All right, then." Coran nodded to Shiro and Keith. "Let's go. Lance is expecting us."

They went.


	11. Chapter 11

It was all too familiar. Lance was struggling to breathe, and all Shiro could do was listen.

"Lance, I'm here, okay?" he said again, standing outside the oxygen tent and shifting from foot to foot, longing to go in. But there wasn't room.

When he and Keith arrived at the infirmary, they could hear Lance's breath the instant they crossed the threshhold. It was loud and ragged and panicky, and Pidge's voice was barely audible underneath, chattering away in a smooth rhythm and begging Lance to calm down. Keith beelined directly to the tent, all but sprinting, Shiro at his heels. Keith ducked inside, and Shiro started to follow, then realized that there wasn't room, just like Coran had warned. He would have to leave the flap open, which would let the oxygen escape and completely the defeat the purpose.

So now Keith and Pidge were in the tent with Lance, trying to calm him down. Somewhere between Coran leaving and the two of them coming down, Lance had lost the battle against his panic. He was in a full attack now, panting and struggling, all but sobbing with every breath. Shiro could hear it, though he couldn't see it well through the semi-translucent curtains.

It hurt. It _hurt._ Every time Shiro had to listen to Lance having a panic attack, it hurt like nothing he'd imagined hurting in his life. He'd never known that he could feel so much for someone else, long so desperately to take their place. Every rasp of Lance's breath seemed to ache in Shiro's own throat, to burn in his lungs. His fists squeezed together, over and over, as if he was trying to grasp the air. He wanted to shout, to run, to jump and fight something. He wanted to scratch his skin off just to escape the awful sensations.

It was deeper than mere sympathy, a feeling of compassion and camaraderie for someone who was suffering. This was empathy. Shiro felt Lance's pain as if it was his own, and it was driving him mad. He understood now why his psychology professors had called true empathy a curse, not a blessing. It didn't give Shiro any insight, any deep understanding of the situation and what to do about it. It didn't tell him what to do or where to go, like sympathy and compassion could do. All it did was make him hurt. All it did was make him want to make this _stop,_ as much for his own sake as for Lance's.

This was why they didn't let surgeons operate on their own family members, Shiro thought fuzzily. How could you bring a knife down on yourself? It would take an iron will, one that Shiro was learning he just didn't have.

He paced, back and forth, back and forth, in front of the tent. "Lance, I'm here!" he called again. "I'm here, I'm right here. I'm pulling for you, kiddo, okay?"

Maybe he needed to try to listen to Keith and Pidge instead. He could still hear their voices, but he hadn't been able to focus on the words they were saying since this horrible ordeal began. Maybe they could help him, too, as they were helping Lance.

Shiro squeezed his eyes shut, hard, then opened them, trying to reset his focus and sense of control. He heard Keith's voice, rough and a little harsh, but full of emotion and passion. He cared about Lance. So much. More than he ever had before. Keith's connection to Lance only seemed to be getting deeper and broader every day. Because of course, that was who Keith was. Once he cared about something, or someone, he was all in. No barriers, no hesitation. It was like crossing a wall. You were in, or you were out, and when you were in, you were deep, deep in. And Lance was in, now.

"Lance, you gotta breathe, buddy," Keith said. Shiro tried to remember if he'd ever heard Keith call someone "buddy" before and couldn't remember. It must have been something he picked up from Hunk, or Lance himself. It sounded strange, tripping off his tongue like an unwieldy newborn animal. But he was trying. He was trying so hard.

"Can you hear me, Lance? That's me, holding your hand. That's Pidge on the other side. She's holding your hand too. We're both here. We're both with you. Shiro's right outside. Everything's gonna be okay. You can breathe. I know it's hard, I know it hurts, but you can do it."

Lance sucked in a breath, and Shiro heard it rattling in his chest, heard the deep, phlegmy shake of it. He let it out in a breathless sob. "Kei...Keith..."

"I'm here, buddy. I'm here. I've got you. You can breathe."

Shiro heard Pidge's voice, too. "Everything's gonna be okay, Lance. We're all here to be with you, and it's gonna be okay. Just breathe. It's okay to be scared. What's happening to you is scary, and I don't blame you at all, but could you maybe ease up on my hand, just a little?"

"...Sorry..." Lance's voice was high, almost inaudible, forced out through whistling breaths.

Pidge sounded like she was on the edge of tears. "No, don't... Don't apologize, Lance. It's okay. I'm just... I'm gonna stay here until you calm down, and then Shiro is gonna squeeze in somehow and I'm gonna go help Hunk and Coran, okay? We're gonna figure out a way to help you breathe without having to use this tent, so you don't feel so closed in and claustrophobic. I know it sucks. We're gonna work up an alternative for you."

It went on for a while longer, Lance struggling to breathe, sobbing for each breathless pull of air, while Keith and Pidge both murmured comforting words and sounded like they were getting more stressed by the second. They were both trying so, so hard, but neither of them were naturally equipped to deal with this. Shiro ached for them, listening to their voices. And he paced, and squeezed his fists, and longed to get in there and help.

Finally, finally, Lance calmed enough that Pidge disengaged and ducked out of the tent. She was grimacing and massaging her hand, but she looked up and gave Shiro a strained smile when she saw him looking at her in concern. "Are you okay?" he asked, but she was already shaking her head and waving him toward the tent.

"Don't worry about me. Go take care of Lance."

Shiro blew out a breath, half-amused and half-grateful, and gave her a sharp nod. Then he finally, finally opened the flap of the tent and stepped inside.

There was barely room to maneuver, but Keith was already in the process of crawling over to the other side of the bed to make room for him. He was having a difficult time of it, still holding one of Lance's hands, which was crabbed around Keith's fingers in a desperate fist. At the rustle of the tent. Lance rolled his head over to look at Shiro. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, his cheeks streaked with tears, and his expression was agonized.

Shiro moved toward him as if drawn by a magnet. And soon as he saw Lance's face, he was locked on, unable to look away.

Lance closed his eyes in relief, his chest rising, then hitching. He let go of Keith and reached out for Shiro instead, fingers clutching at the air. "Sh...Shiro..."

"I'm here. I'm here. I'm right here with you."

Somehow, despite the cramped conditions, Shiro managed to hunch over the bed and pull the kid into his arms. He held him around the shoulders, trying not to press their chests together, still shatteringly aware of the fragility of Lance's breath. Lance clutched at Shiro's shoulders and upper arms just as hard, pressing his upper face desperately against the ridge of Shiro's shoulder as he bowed his head to keep his mouth clear so he could pant.

"I'm here," Shiro murmured, rocking him carefully. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere."

He closed his eyes in relief, just at the sensation of having Lance in his arms again. It didn't solve anything, not really, but an overwhelming feeling of safety and peace washed over him, even so. He was pretty sure Lance felt the same. It was too much like the jungle, again, when all they'd had to hold onto was each other. Shiro remembered hiding under the leaves from the Galra patrol, the desperate way they had clutched each other as if trying to merge into one.

And it had worked. They had escaped the search. They had been safe together for that moment, that terrible moment, terrified and at the end of their rope but finding stability in each other's arms, listening to each other's breath.

Shiro opened his eyes and looked up at Keith, remembering, too, how badly Keith had reacted to Shiro and Lance's sudden closeness when they returned. How Keith had thought that Shiro was disappearing from his life, that Lance had taken his place and there was nothing he could do. Keith couldn't even complain about it, couldn't say anything until his fear and grief overflowed and caused terrible pain to the person who deserved it the least: Lance.

But there was nothing like that in Keith's eyes now. He looked back at Shiro with understanding and relief, glad that he was here to help Lance hold onto his fraying sense of reality. Shiro would never cease to admire and honor the way Keith had been able to overcome his initial bad feelings. He had gotten to know Lance, proactively sought reconciliation and then friendship. Now, Lance could have no greater advocate than Keith, and vice versa. They were bonded as brothers, too, just as strongly as Shiro and Lance were, though in a different way.

"Lance, kiddo, can I sit with you?" Just like that time under the leaves, Shiro only wanted to get closer. He wanted the support of sitting with his back against something strong, clutching Lance tight against the front of his body where he knew exactly what was going on with him. He wasn't sure how he was gonna make that work in a tiny, cramped hospital bed, but that was what he wanted.

Lance's head shivered in a nod. "D...don't let go of me..."

"Wasn't planning on it."

Shiro squeezed Lance's shoulders, then shifted his grip, trying to give himself some room to move. Keith helped, dragging off the sheet that had gotten twisted around Lance's waist. Lance tried to help, too, trying to move himself in the way Shiro was heading, but he was so weak that all he could really do was shift his weight. He was pliable in Shiro's arms, letting himself be manhandled.

Eventually they got themselves sorted. Shiro ended up half-sitting, half-reclining in the bed with one leg hanging off of it, Lance all but sitting in his lap, turned sideways so his head rested on Shiro's chest. One arm was wrapped around Shiro's neck, and the other hand clutched at the front of his shirt. Shiro had stripped out of his armor during that interminable waiting period, knowing that it was no good here.

Stripping off the armor had felt natural, almost necessary. Shiro's heart was already laid bare and vulnerable by the sounds of suffering coming from inside the tent, not just from Lance but from Keith and Pidge as well. He'd already been pierced to his core, so the armor had already failed.

Lance curled up in Shiro's arms as much as his limited strength allowed. Shiro shifted his grip so he cradled Lance's head with one hand, the other one bracing his upper back. Slowly, incrementally, he felt Lance's body relax. His pulse was still pounding in his temple, pressed against Shiro's neck, but his muscles were going loose, body limp against Shiro's. The poor kid was covered in sweat and it was objectively disgusting and uncomfortable to hold him, but Shiro felt so, so much better here than he had felt outside the tent that the two states weren't really comparable at all.

"All right," Shiro murmured. "We're all right. I've got you. I've got you. You're gonna be okay."

Lance didn't even try to answer, his breath still rough and ragged in his throat, though it was calmer now. But his head shivered, and Shiro took it as a negation.

He brushed his fingers through the messy hair on the back of Lance's head. "I know it's hard to believe, kiddo. Trust me, I know. But you're gonna be okay. I promise. This is going to pass. We're all fighting with you on this. Coran and Pidge and Hunk are working on a machine for you, and Keith and I are right here with you now, and Allura is on the bridge keeping us all safe from anything that could try to mess with us." _Including Trazo,_ he thought but didn't say. "She's pulling for you, too. We're all pulling for you. We're in this together. You're not alone."

Lance shivered again and breathed out a word that made almost no sound at all. "Hurts..."

Shiros' heart clenched in his chest. It felt like someone had reached a hand in there and squeezed it like a grape. His breath caught, and he had to force out his next words. "I... I know, sweetheart. I know it hurts. You just need to hold on a little while longer. We'll have Keith call Coran and see if we can give you any more medicine, okay?" He didn't have to even glance at Keith to know that he was already reaching for the comm button. "Hopefully we can at least give you some painkillers, or maybe something to help you keep calm. Does that sound good?"

Lance nodded against his neck, slow and sluggish. "Tha...thanks."

Shiro closed his eyes and squeezed him close. "You don't have to thank us, kiddo. We're taking care of you because we can't stand you hurting. You're our heart, and when you're in pain, we're all in pain. It's selfish of us, really. We need you to be okay so we can be okay."

Lance let out a breathless little chuckle at that, going completely limp and boneless against Shiro.

Shiro's mouth turned up in a smile. "I know it sounds silly, but it's the truth. You're gonna be okay, because we are all gonna make you be okay. You are so, so important to us, Lance. Please don't ever doubt that."

Lance nodded, slow and exhausted. Shiro finally let himself relax as well, laying against the bed with Lance curled up in his arms. Everything was going to be okay. It wasn't a hope, it was a promise.


	12. Chapter 12

For a long while, Lance drifted. His mind, his body, everything that was _him_ seemed to be umoored. He was lost in a thick haze of fever and fear and pain. He knew he was sick, and he knew that it was really bad, but other than that rather abstract idea, he didn't feel entirely connected to his body.

Sometimes he knew that he was in the Castle of Lions. Sometimes he thought he was back in the jungle, feeling the swelter, the heat. Sometimes he thought he was back in the swamp, surrounded by a fetid fog. Sometimes he thought he was back at home, surrounded by his family. Sometimes he thought he was in that prison room, staring at the blood spattered on the floor. He heard the helpless people struggling to breathe with their throats slashed, their eyes staring. Then he realized that was him.

Sometimes he realized, briefly, that he was stuck in a tiny tent with two other people, and that was when he came the closest to feeling his body again as it seized up with panic. He couldn't breathe, and everything was too tight, too close, and he couldn't breathe, and he was dying, and it hurt, it hurt so much, and...

And then Blue's purr echoed louder in the back of his mind, drawing him away from that terror, that agony. And he drifted again.

Through it all, the only anchor to the solid world was Shiro. Lance knew that he was with Shiro, that he was curled up in his lap. He knew that Shiro's arms were around him. He could feel Shiro's chest gently lifting and falling under his head. Sometimes he could hear Shiro's voice, not always words, just the sound of it. That was enough to comfort him. Shiro was with him, and Keith had his back, and everyone else was fighting for him, too. He knew it was true because Shiro said it.

If Shiro shifted, the panic flared to life again, and Lance grabbed onto him. It wasn't a conscious decision. He was just desperate not to lose the only point of safety he could rely on right now. His breath sped up, rasping in his throat, and little begging words whimpered out of his mouth. "Please, please..." _Don't leave me. Don't let go. Please. Please._

Shiro never did. He always went back to holding Lance close in his arms, murmuring soft words above his head. And Lance relaxed and went back to drifting.

Then things changed. There was movement, a change of the air. New voices came, Pidge, Hunk, Coran. Keith and Shiro answered them, more words that Lance couldn't understand and didn't try to. Shiro shifted underneath him, and Lance whimpered and latched on to him with all his failing strength. "N-no... No, please..."

Shiro breathed out something that might have been a sigh. "I'm not going anywhere, Lance. I swear. I'm right here with you. We all are."

Still, he didn't stop moving, and Lance clung harder. Movement, a change of the light behind his closed eyelids. Shiro shifted, still holding Lance in his arms. He moved his arms, got them under Lance's body. Other hands pulled blankets tight around Lance, wrapping him up like a burrito, and then more movement.

Shiro was carrying him. Lance vaguely recognized the sensation, since this had happened several times before. He wasn't embarrased this time. Not even a little bit. He was happy, because Shiro was taking care of him. Shiro wasn't leaving him. The lights brightened, almost painful even with his eyes closed. Lance tucked his face under Shiro's chin, hiding from the light. He drifted, rocked by the cadence of Shiro's careful walk.

The movement stopped. Shiro was shifting Lance in his arms again, lowering him down... Lance clung tighter and whined against his chest. But, no, Shiro wasn't letting go of him. He was sitting with him, somewhere new. Lance curled up in his lap again and was shatteringly content. He felt like a cat coiled in the sun, even though it was dim here.

Speaking of...hadn't it been bright? Lance reluctantly cracked one eye open, then closed it again. They weren't in the tent anymore, and that was good enough for him. Shiro was still holding him, and Keith and Hunk and Pidge and Coran were all nearby. They were talking about something, but Lance didn't understand it. He didn't need to. He was okay. He could even breathe at least as well as he'd been able to inside the tent, but now he wasn't closed in anymore.

Finally, after all that drifting, Lance had found a safe harbor. He slept, Blue's purr luring him down into the darkness.

X

Things finally seemed to be calming down. Keith stepped back and looked down at Shiro and Lance, now settled on a couch in one of the smaller lounges-small so that the device the tech trio had cooked up would work well, and so that when Lance felt more like himself he wouldn't be overwhelmed and would be able to rest comfortably. It was much larger than the oxygen tent, though, so hopefully Lance wouldn't feel claustrophobic anymore.

Right now, though, he was asleep, head cuddled into Shiro's shoulder, body wrapped up like a burrito. His face was shiny with sweat, forehead still wrinkled in pain even as he slept. Shiro looked half-asleep, too, face drawn with exhaustion as he leaned into the corner of the couch, head bending over Lance's and eyelids drooping.

Hunk was still talking somewhere to left as Pidge and Coran tinkered with the machine in the corner, something about how it worked. It was set to Lance's bio-signature and used focused technology to increase the level of oxygen only around him, with an invisible quintessence barrier keeping it contained. Keith barely understood one word in three.

The only thing that mattered was that it worked. Lance was resting comfortably, and he was breathing as well as he could under the circumstances. Even now, even with all the noise of Hunk's talking and the machine whirring and Pidge and Coran humming in agreement, Keith could still hear the wheeze of Lance's breath under it all. It was deeply worrying, high-pitched and slightly whistling. Earlier, when he'd been sitting in the tent, Keith had clearly been able to hear the crackle in Lance's lungs when he breathed. That was a bad, bad sound.

That was a death sound. Keith remembered it, from his long-ago foster sister who kept hamsters. No pet-owner wanted to hear that sound. And now Lance had it.

"Keith." Shiro's voice was soft, understanding. Keith blinked and looked up from where he'd been staring fixedly into Lance's face, his forehead wrinkled. He was still standing by the couch, hadn't even noticed as lost in thought as he was.

Keith winced at the weariness in Shiro's face, but gave him a tired nod. "I'm okay. Don't worry about me."

Shiro smiled and let his head rest against the couch behind him. "All right. Good job back there in the infirmary, by the way. I know that was hard for you. You did great."

"I'm getting pretty good at talking Lance through his panic attacks."

"Yeah, you are."

"I just wish they didn't happen so often." For a while it had seemed like they were getting better, but today... Today was bad. Understandable under the circumstances, maybe, but Keith still didn't like it.

Shiro sighed, his eyes falling shut for a moment, then opening again. "Yeah."

Keith frowned and looked more carefully into his face. "Are _you_ okay? You seem to be taking this...really hard."

Now that he said it, Keith knew that was true. Shiro always took it badly when any of them were hurt or sick, of course. Especially Lance, since they'd been through so much together. But this time was worse than usual. Keith couldn't articulate why, not even in his head, but it was definitely true.

He sidled a step closer and leaned on the arm of the couch on one hip, frowning down into Shiro's face. "Something about this is really messing with you, huh?"

Shiro was quiet for a long moment, not meeting Keith's eyes. He stared off into the distance, then down at Lance, snuggled against him. "I guess so." He looked up at Keith, and Keith almost took a step back at the pure, bone-deep exhaustion in his face. He gritted his teeth and stayed where he was.

"I don't mind telling you..." Shiro started. "Now that you mention it, yeah. This is rough. It reminds me too much of last time. When Lance and I were down on that planet together, and he was so, so sick, and the Galra were coming after us, and they just didn't stop coming. I guess it makes sense, since he has pneumonia again, for me to remember that time so clearly. But it...it was really bad, Keith. Really bad."

Keith grimaced in sympathy. "I get it. It was hard on Lance, that whole thing. But it was hard on you, too. The Galra coming after you, not being sure if you could escape. And the whole time needing to protect someone weaker than you, who you loved like a brother. It's pretty much your worst-case scenario, just like not being able to breathe is Lance's worst-case scenario, now."

"Yeah." Shiro lifted one hand and buried it in Lance's hair, even as he let his head tip back to rest on the back of the couch so he could stare blankly at the dim ceiling. His voice was barely a whisper. "I thought he was gonna die, Keith. He almost...he almost did die."

"But he didn't. And he's not gonna die now." Keith knocked his foot against the toe of Shiro's boot, peeking out from under the blanket trailing down to the floor. "He's safe on the ship this time, and we're gonna take care of him. He's not gonna die."

Shiro sighed and closed his eyes. His fingers tightened against Lance's head. "Yeah. I know."

"Shiro." Keith knocked against his boot again, until Shiro reluctantly opened his eyes and raised his head to look at him. Keith stared earnestly into his face, his fists tight with tension. "You're safe, too."

Shiro locked eyes with him for a long moment, wavering on the edge of a tremble. Then smiled, soft and sweet, and let his head rest back again. His eyes shut, more softly this time, his body going limp and relaxed. "Yeah. I know."

Keith nodded, satisfied. He left Lance and Shiro to their rest and joined the others on the other side of the room.

Hunk and Pidge were talking with their heads bent together as they crouched by their machine, Coran hovering over them pulling his mustache as he kept glancing over the couch where Shiro and Lance were resting. Coran smiled at Keith's approach, then nudged the others until they looked up at blinked at him owlishly.

"Great job," Keith said. "It's working. Lance is fast asleep. He's comfortable enough that even Shiro is starting to relax."

Hunk's shoulders slumped visibly, but Pidge's forehead was still wrinkled. She had a smudge of something that looked like grease on her face, except it was bright orange instead of black. Keith impulsively reached out and rubbed at it with his thumb, and Pidge flinched but didn't pull away. After a moment she rolled her eyes and just let him work. The smudge flaked off under his thumb, and Keith nodded in satisfaction and stood back.

"I'll keep an eye on the device every half varga or so, make sure to keep adjusting it until it's perfect." Coran gave Keith a thumbs up. "I intend to keep a much closer watch on Lance from now on, that's for sure."

Hunk rubbed a hand over his face, fingertips digging into his flesh. "It seems like it got really bad, really fast..."

Coran nodded soberly. "It does, yes. It might be that the Altean medicine I gave him is accelerating the sickness."

Pidge's eyes flashed, and she pivoted to look at him, her mouth pressed into a sharp line. "Are you saying that you gave Lance medicine without even knowing what it would do to him?" Her voice was sharp, too, and Keith could sympathize. His own fury was rising too.

Coran raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I suspected that there might be unintended consequences, yes. All of my analyses showed that the medicines I used would be safe for humans, but I'm not a doctor or an alchemist. I can't predict everything that might happen, as much as I wish I could. I thought this side effect was possible, but I had no way to tell for sure, and Lance's condition was such that I forged ahead with the knowledge I had. I am deeply sorry to see him suffering, I assure you, and the thought that I might have made it worse..."

His mustache drooped. Hunk reached out and patted his shoulder, making a comforting noise deep in his throat. Pidge backed off, too, and Keith felt his anger subside. Coran was doing his best, just like the rest of them. It wasn't his fault that Lance was so sick. Sometimes life was just hard.

Keith looked away and heaved a sigh. "It might not have been the medicine, anyway. Sometimes people just get really sick, really fast. Lance has been under a lot of stress lately, we all have, and his body is susceptible to this. It's not anyone's fault."

Pidge snort-laughed and punched his side. "So _reasonable,_ samurai."

He gave her a half-smile. "You picking up Lance's nicknames now?"

"Someone has to speak for him while he's not up to it."

They all looked back to the couch, almost reflexively. It was a relief to see Lance safe and sound, though the high wheeze of his breath still sounded in the room. Shiro was nodding off, too, which was also nice to see. They were silent for a moment, taking it in.

"I don't want to go," Pidge said in a small voice. "Can't the mission wait?"

Keith looked at her. This mission was about getting one step closer to rescuing her family. Had she forgotten?

But he saw the way she was looking at Lance, and he understood. Lance was family, too, and he was right in front of her. She was scared of losing more.

He put a hand on her shoulder, tentative, then more strong, and she looked up at him. "We're going to take care of him," he said, using the same tone and fierceness he'd used to reassure Shiro. "He's safe, and he's going to be fine. You can trust us."

Pidge stared into his face for a moment, just long enough for him to see her eyes water. Then she flashed a smile and turned away, scrubbing at her face. "Yeah. I know. Thanks."

She ducked out from under Keith's hand and went over to the couch to say her good-byes. Hunk, Keith, and Coran stayed by the device giving her the moment. Keith stood straight, unwavering, but regret pierced him. He wished he could take back everything he said.

He didn't want Pidge and Allura to leave right now, either. Lance being so sick made everything feel more precarious, more dangerous, like catastrophe was lurking around every corner. It put him on edge, made him wish for something more concrete to do than offering inadequate words of comfort. He wanted all of his family close by where he could make sure they were safe.

He didn't say this. He held his tongue, as he was slowly, painfully learning to do. Pidge touched Lance's face, murmured some words to Shiro as he sleepily raised his head to look at her, then gave a slow nod. And she left.

Keith let her.


End file.
